This paper reports on the semantics study regarding the words expressing ‘Space’ in Japanese. The previous studies on Japanese spatial nouns were focused on individual meanings of the vocabulary. The present study, however, sought to categorize each space to each spatial noun in order to sort spatial nouns more systematically. It was found that unlike region-reference spatial nouns, direction-reference spatial nouns could be used in both exterior region-reference and partial region-reference. Partial region-reference is classified with boundary region-reference and interior region-reference. Furthermore, in order to make theoretical frame for translating of nouns which have various meanings, we analyzed the characteristics of sentence structure of Japanese spatial noun /mae/, and proposed “ambiguity analysis rules of spatial noun /mae/. This rule is proposed under the hypothesis that the meaning of /mae/ is determined by the meaning of predicate and the property of reference. This rule also contributes to a job of translation related to ambiguities of spatial-nouns.

Lee, Sang-Oh. 1999. Chain Formation by Feature Checking and Scope Ambiguity. Studies in Modern Grammar 17, 123-140. This paper aims at providing a plausible explanatory mechanism on the relative scope ambiguity between quantifiers in one sentence. Aoun & Li`s (1989, 1993) Minimal Binding Requirement and Scope Princsple, which have explained such ambiguity relations between quantifiers, leave some technical and conceptional problems in that some stipulations are to be required. However, the newly formed chains based on feature-checking in the minimalist theory suggested in Kitahara(1993), i.e., the distinct chains formed by feature-checking motivation based on the minimalist theory, give clear ways of explanation on the scope ambiguity between quantifiers in a sentence without any stipulations. Thus, following the present trends treating relative scope ambiguity relations without recourse to the rule of Quantifier Raising(QR) could be crucially supported by this kind of feature-checking approach to the scope ambiguity between quantifiers. Furthermore, it supports the argument for the quantification theory without recourse to the rule of QR.