A Computational Model of Language Generation Applied to Japanese Wh-questions

This paper discusses a computational model of language generation, based on work in Phase Theory, that attempts to shed light on how the human mind generates sentences. This model presents explicit algorithms that a) determine selection and merger of Lexical Items, b) determine the labels of Merged elements, c) account for movement of Lexical Items within a derivation, and d) account for when chunks of a sentence are sent to Spell-Out. We demonstrate how this model accounts for generation of a wh-question in Japanese.