Relational Nouns as Anaphors

This paper examines the syntactic and semantic properties of a set of nouns recently called "Relational Nouns" like mother, neighbor, etc. Relational nouns denote relations between individuals, rather than sets of individuals regular nouns denote, and are referentially dependent on individual-denoting expressions. In Japanese relational nouns may appear 'bare' with no genitive possessors in the noun phrases they project, i.e., but still require the possessors somewhere in sentences. The presence of bare relational nouns allow Japanese to have a lot of peculiar constructions like multiple subject sentence, indirect passives, etc. Assuming the a version of categorial grammar in which the syntax and semantics work in tandem, we discuss the proper way to provide model-theoretic interpretations for expressions containing relational nouns under direct compositionality.