THE SEMANTIC STRUCTURE OF JAPANESE ADJECTIVES WITH -TAI DERIVATIONAL SUFFIX

This paper treats the japanese adjective phrase forming derivational suffix -tai from a new point of view: firstly it tries to approach from a semantic standpoint by applying the proposal made in Ikeya (1991). It will be shown that adjective phrases formed by -tai fits nicely with the semantic structure proposed by Ikeya. Secondly, we attempt to 'derive' -tai sentences by adopting a basic framework of HPSG so that we can 'derive' them without having recourse to transformational operations, that is, in a monostratal way. In tackling the problem we have tried to incorporate many ideas proposed so far on this issue.