ABSTRACT
It is easier to argue that parsing Japanese is impossible than to explain how it is done. The special problems posed by the Japanese language result from three central facts about its grammar:
Japanese is head-final: Verbs follow their arguments and adjuncts; nouns follow their modifiers; complementizers, subordinating adverbs, and conjunctions follow the clauses they govern.
Scrambling: Argument and adjunct phrases are freely ordered within a clause, and (though less commonly) across a clause boundary.
Null pronouns: Any argument can be phonologically unrealized if the discourse context is sufficient to identify its reference.
