Head-Internal Relative Clauses and the Mapping Hypothesis

In this paper, we claim that existential implication based on existential closure (Heim (1982)) plays a crucial role in the syntax and semantics of constructions involving head-internal relative clauses (HIRC). By adopting Diesing (1992) Mapping Hypothesis, we assert that the VP level is crucial: the internal head must be interpreted inside VP at LF. By this hypothesis, we can explain some interesting properties inside the HIRC, which have not been noticed in the previous literature. Although we concentrate on Japanese examples, this hypothesis may be applicable to other languages which include the HIRC construction, as briefly mentioned in section 3.2. In Part II of the present paper, we will discuss some specific problems of negation in HIRC constructions, and explore its relevance both in syntactic and semantic terms