A Multi-Modal Combinatory Categorial Grammar Analysis of Japanese Nonconstituent Clefting

Despite the notion that clefting is a cross-linguistic constituency test, Japanese allows some nonconstituent exceptions. There is, however, a certain restriction on the degree of flexibility; some constituents are more tightly connected (and thus less likely to be separated by clefting) than others. We refine Kubota and Smith’s (2006) CCG account in terms of Multi-Modal CCG (Baldridge, 2002): finer-grained modal control provides a means for capturing different degrees of connectedness between an argument and its functor. We then demonstrate how a MMCCG system that finds independent motivation from syntactic complex predicate data interacts with a simple analysis of clefting to account for the full range of clefting patterns. This in turn suggests that what seems to pose problems for a simple analysis of a given phenomenon (clefting) can be overcome once interactions with other phenomena are taken into account.