Predicates, events, and discourse: Representing the so-called head-internal relatives in Japanese

The goal of this dissertation is to present a model of the representation of interpretation for an untensed nominal complement construction in Japanese, the so-called Head-Internal Relative (HIR) construction. In spite of its name, I claim that the alleged HIR clause is in fact a nominal complement clause on the grounds that it is gapless, that certain corresponding relative clause formations are impossible, and that the apparent head nominal -no does not convey meaningful content. Furthermore, the clausal complement is claimed to be untensed, and consequently the temporal interpretation of this construction necessarily involves access to the discourse representation of event units. I examine the construction in the light of discourse event representation. The referent of the apparently missing head can be identified within the HIR clause as a participant of two contiguous event units represented in discourse.; With observations of the core meanings of the aspectual predicates that exclusively appear in the HIR, I present a specific reasoning process of what I call Default Matching and argue that a matching process such as this is vital to the interpretation of the temporal ordering relation between the two events in the HIR, since tense is unspecified in the clause. Furthermore, by incorporating a representational theory of discourse interpretation, I attempt to present an integrative model of discourse representation for untensed clause constructions such as the HIR.; I further investigate the core property of the subject marker -ga, which is the only possible case marking in the subject position of the HIR clause. I demonstrate that the existential nature of -ga contributes to the thetic introduction of the first event that is connected to the second event in the information-updating processes of discourse: an existentially presented event in the preceding discourse and a newly introduced event in the discourse update. I conclude that the HIR sets up an existential condition sufficient for the consequent event, which is contiguous with the first event, to occur.