ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar analysis of Japanese passives. The passive construction has been a focus of attention in many linguistic studies both in English and in Japanese. The chapter assumes that the Japanese passive consists of three types: direct, possessive, and indirect passives. It shows that possessive passives share the same properties with direct passives. The same trends are of course found in Japanese linguistics; i.e., from transformational approaches to lexical approaches and movement approaches. Lexicalist approaches assume that the passive morpheme (r)are is attached by a morphological process; that is, in the lexicon. According to Terada 1990, the contrast between the two passive types also has a bearing on the level of application of Verb Incorporation. Gunji 1987 presents a phrase structure analysis of passivization in the framework of Japanese Phrase Structure Grammar that he has proposed.
