The Relevance of Factivity to Complementizer Choice in Japanese

This article re-examines the correlation between factivity and complementizer choice in Japanese. Kuno (1973) argues that the concept of factivity proposed by Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1971) to analyze the choice of complement types in English is a determining factor in complementizer choice in Japanese. Observation of data collected for this study indicates that there are numerous instances that cannot be accounted for using the concept of factivity. Complementizer choice in Japanese is determined, not by factivity of the predicate, but by the degree of internalization of the information/proposition expressed in the complement.