Antisymmetry and Japanese

This chapter discusses antisymmetry and returns to the question of prepositions, by addressing the question of how the syntax of postpositions is to be integrated into the above-verb phrase (VP)/internal Merge approach. The proposal is that sentences with postpositions contain an extra double of P that sentences with prepositions lack; if this is correct, the difference between prepositional and postpositional sentences has something in common with cross-linguistic differences concerning clitic doubling. The emphasis is on certain aspects of the antisymmetry hypothesis of Kayne and to a certain extent on their implications for Japanese. The starting point is the hypothesis that syntactic structure is universally and without exception of the form specifier-head-complement (S-H-C): the complement of a head invariably follows that head; the associated specifier invariably precedes both head and complement. This S-H-C hypothesis is taken to hold at all stages of a derivation, both before and after movement.