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This study investigates the knowledge of unaccusativity in Japanese native, heritage, and second/foreign language speakers with respect to licensing of floating numeral quantifiers (FNQs) by unaccusative and unergative subjects (the "FNQ diagnostic"). Two acceptability judgment experiments were conducted to examine (i) whether and how judgments of the three populations differ with respect to the FNQ paradigm and (ii) whether and how manipulations of agentivity of subjects and telicity of events affect their judgments of the FNQ diagnostic. Our findings show that (i) the native and heritage speakers' knowledge about the FNQ diagnostic are largely indistinguishable from each other, (ii) some L2 speakers' judgments show signs of initial development of the knowledge of the FNQ diagnostic, and (iii) telicity shows clear effects on the FNQ diagnostic with all three groups, while the effects of agentivity are subtle and detectible only with the native and heritage speakers.

Since influential work by Perlmutter (1968, 1970), the standard analysis of English aspectual verbs (EAVs) is that they are ambiguous between control and raising verbs. In this paper, I first argue against the control/raising analysis of EAVs by showing that: (i) there is no clear evidence that any EAV is thematic and (ii) there is no clear evidence that EAVs form bi-clausal sentences. As an alternative, I propose that EAVs are functional heads projecting their own phrases, or aspect phrases (Travis 1991), in two different positions in a clause: inside the verbal projection (between v and VP) or outside it (immediately above vP). The difference in the position of an EAV is spelled out as two different forms of their complements. When an EAV is between v and VP, it is realized as a gerundive. When an EAV is above vP, it is realized as an infinitive. I argue that the analysis accounts for the evidence used to motivate the control/raising analysis as well as previously overlooked differences among EAVs. Further arguments for the proposed analysis of EAVs are provided by data from aspectual verbs in other languages.

Different instances of the Japanese passive morpheme, –(r)are, show conflicting behaviors, sometimes like the prototypical passive and other times like a predicate taking a clausal complement. As such, they have resisted attempts to achieve a unified analysis. In this paper, I argue that the apparent irreconcilable differences among different instances of Japanese passives can be given a unified account with the following assumptions: i) Japanese passives are functional heads whose projection provides a structure with which an external argument is introduced, ii) only one type of the passives, Indirect Passive, is capable of proving structural case to its complement, and iii) external arguments introduced by Japanese passives receive their interpretation compositionally. According to the proposed analysis, the differences among different instances of the passive morpheme are due to a single factor: presence/absence of structural case.

Cesium-137 (137Cs) is one of the radioactive substances that was released into the environment as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Radiocesium exposure is of great concern due to its potential environmental implications. However, research on 137Cs removal using algae is still limited. This is the first report to describe the kinetic properties of 137Cs uptake by Vacuoliviride crystalliferum in the presence and absence of potassium. In this work, we studied the kinetic properties of 137Cs uptake using a freshwater microalga, V. crystalliferum (NIES 2860). We also analyzed the effects of temperature, light, and potassium (K) on the 137Cs uptake. Results showed that V. crystalliferum can remove up to 90% of 157 nM 137Cs within an hour. At 20 °C, the removal increased by up to 96%, compared to less than 10% at 5 °C. However, the removal was inhibited by nearly 90% in the dark compared to the removal in the light, implying that V. crystalliferum cells require energy to accumulate 137Cs. In the inhibition assay, K concentrations ranged from 0 to 500 µM and the inhibitory constant (Ki) for K was determined to be 16.7 µM. While in the uptake assay without potassium (− K), the Michaelis constant (Km) for Cs was 45 nM and increased to 283 nM by the addition of 20 µM potassium (+ K), indicating that V. crystalliferum had a high affinity for 137Cs. In addition, the maximum uptake velocity (Vmax) also increased from 6.75 to 21.10 nmol (mg Chl h)−1, implying the existence of Cs active transport system. In conclusion, V. crystalliferum is capable of removing radioactive 137Cs from the environment and the removal was favorable at both normal temperature and in the light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]