Personal-taste secondary predicates: Why they are found in Japanese and not in English

Adjectives that describe personal tastes like omosiro(i) 'interesting' and oisi(i) 'tasty' can occur as secondary predicates associated with the object of a verb in Japanese, whereas comparable adjectives in English cannot.Given the hypothesis that oblique experiencer arguments must move to Spec,TP, it is proposed that the difference between the two languages is attributed to a difference in the availability of a position to which those arguments selected by the adjectives move.Those adjectives in Japanese can occur in a subordinate clause involving TP without an overt copula, allowing their experiencer to move to Spec,TP in their own clause.However, those in English cannot, forcing their experiencer to move to Spec,TP in the matrix clause in violation of the adjunct condition.Furthermore, it is suggested that the subordinate clause containing those secondary predicates in Japanese may involve a null operator that mediates a predication relation with the matrix object.