Theoretical Comparative Syntax

13   The Visibility Guideline for functional categories

Verb-raising in Japanese and related issues

with Hiromu Sakai

1   Introduction

Although the traditional term “function words” or Chomsky's (1970) notion of “non-lexical categories” has much in common with the contemporary notion of “functional categories”, it seems fair to say that it is since the mid-1980s, when a class of elements was given the name “functional categories/elements” (Fukui 1986, Speas 1986, Abney 1987, among others) and their properties were first discussed in detail, that these elements have been a focus of much attention within the context of universal grammar (UG). The importance of these elements for the theory of grammar comes from the fact that (i) they are taken ...