A Mono-Clausal Analysis of Afterthought Right Dislocation in Japanese

This study investigates specificational afterthought right dislocation (ARD) in Japanese, where a sentence-final constituent (appendix) clarifies a pronoun-like element (correlate) within the main clause. Unlike prior biclausal or antisymmetric accounts, this paper proposes a mono-clausal, head-final structure incorporating topic and focus movement within a cartographic framework. The analysis explains the observed properties of ARD—such as island sensitivity, anaphor binding, and case/particle matching—by positing that the correlate and appendix form a base DP, with the appendix undergoing movement to the right periphery. Crucially, the study accounts for the fixed ordering of multiple sentence-final discourse particles (e.g., wa yo ne) by aligning them with distinct syntactic projections. This approach resolves issues faced by previous models and provides a unified derivation for both simple and particle-rich ARD constructions, reinforcing a head-final structure while maintaining the explanatory benefits of cartographic syntax.