On Case Alternation Phenomena : A Categorial Approach

In Japanese potential and tough constructions, arguments standing in various semantic relations to a base verb can be marked with nominative case. Such subjects also may show up with genitive case in nominalizations irrespective of their semantic relations. This paper, addressing a variety of case alternations which have not hetherto attracted much attention from theoretical linguistics, proposes within the categorial framework that case alternations can be accounted for in terms of the applicability of a type shift rule introducing gaps into predicatephrases and the composition rule which combines base verbs with higher stative predicates passing the information about gaps up to the result categories.