On Some Differences between Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Relative Clauses and the Parallelism between Head-Internal and Head-External Relative Clauses in Japanese

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In Japanese relative clauses, nonrestrictive clauses have certain properties distinct from those of restrictive clauses. In particular, the differences in terms of their structural complexity and temporal interpretation imply their difference in syntax. The paper proposes that the outer layers of the extended projection of NPs are associated with features related to the interface with the discourse, and that the differences between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses in temporal interpretation and in the occurrence of epistemic modals are attributed to their different merge positions. It also points out that in the so-called Head-internal relative clauses, the same kinds of differences between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses are observed. Since there is no apparent categorical distinction among Head-internal relative clauses, the differences between restrictive and nonrestrictive clause cannot be attributed to a categorical difference, and they offer support for the proposed analysts based on the different merge positions, which in turn support the uniform structure for different types of relative clauses as proposed in Cinque (2003/8) and Cinque (2008).

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