Cover not available
Part of
(Non)referentiality in Conversation
Edited by Michael C. Ewing and Ritva Laury
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 344] 2024
► pp. 103–122

Chapter 6
(Non)referentiality of silent reference in Japanese conversation

How and what are inferred

| Stanford University
Japanese speakers carry out successful conversations in which arguments and adjuncts of predicates are not expressed. I call such unmentioned members of an event or state that can be inferred INFERABLES. Inferables present a range of interpretations from specific to more general and indeterminate. This chapter explores principled explanations for this phenomenon in Japanese, which allows a variety of disparate interpretations. The discussions find that frame semantics, a semantic theory that provides an envisionment of a described event with the attendant roles, can offer an explanation. Hearers and speakers TRUST each other that some plausible entities (inferables) instantiate the unmentioned elements. When clarification is needed, they seek to ENSURE the construal by providing more explicit descriptions
Keywords: Japanese, ellipsis, zero-anaphora, inferables, frame semantics, conversational principle, trust-ensure, (non)referentiality, indeterminacy, pragmatics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Background
    • 1.2The proposal
  • 2.Referentiality and inferentiality: A Variety of inferables
    • 2.1Fluid and flexible indeterminate inferables
    • 2.2Indeterminate inferables and non-explicit switch reference
    • 2.3Latent resolution of inferables
    • 2.4Ambiguous inferables
    • 2.5Ensuring specific inferable when needed
  • 3.Conclusion and implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.344.06mat
References (30)
References
Clancy, Patricia M. and Pamela Downing. 1987. “The Use of wa as a Cohesion Marker in Japanese Oral Narratives.” In Perspectives on Topicalization: The Case of Japanese wa, ed. by John Hinds, Senko Maynard, and Shoichi Iwasaki, 3–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidson, D. 1984. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Miriam and Michael Strube. 1999. “Resolving Discourse Deictic Anaphora in Dialogues.” In Proceedings of EACL-99. Bergen, Norway. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1977. “The Case for Case Reopened.” In Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 8: Grammatical Relations, ed. by Peter Cole and Jerrold Sadock, 59–82. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1982. “Frame Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, ed. by Linguistic Society of Korea. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing. 111–138.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. and Beryl T. Atkins. 1992. “Toward a Frame-Based Lexicon: The Semantics of RISK and its Neighbors.” In Frames, Fields, and Contrasts, ed. by Adrienne Lehrer and Eva Feder Kittay, 75–102. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc.Google Scholar
Fry, John S. 2001. Ellipsis and Wa-Marking in Japanese Conversation. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Stanford University.
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hinds, John. 1982. Ellipsis in Japanese. Alberta: Linguistic Research.Google Scholar
Kameyama, Megumi. 1985. Zero Anaphora: The Case of Japanese. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Stanford University.
Kuno, Susumu. 1973. The Structure of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 1978. Danwa no Bunpoo [Grammar of discourse]. Tokyo: Taishukan.Google Scholar
. 1987. Functional Syntax: Anaphora, Discourse and Empathy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kuroda, Shige-Yuki. 1979. Generative Grammatical Studies in the Japanese Language. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Yoshiko. 1981a. “Written and Spoken Language in Japanese: From the Aspect of Ellipsis.” Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
. 1981b. “Noun Phrase Ellipsis in Japanese Discourse.” Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
. 1981c. “How do People Refer to Things?” Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
. 1997. Noun-Modifying Constructions in Japanese: A Frame-Semantic approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. In press. “Frame Semantics.” The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar, ed. by Mirjam Fried and Kiki Nikiforidou. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2002. “Silent reference in Japanese discourse,” a paper presented in a panel “Toward a Cognitive and Interactional Understanding of Person Reference in Japanese: A Usage-Based Approach” at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. Washington, D.C. April 4–7, 2002
Nariyama, Shigeko. 2000. Referent identification for ellipted arguments in Japanese. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Melbourne.
Ohso, Mieko. 1976. A Study of Zero Pronominalization. Ph.D. Dissertation. The Ohio State University.
Ono, Tsuyoshi, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1997. “Deconstructing ‘Zero Anaphora’ in Japanese.” In Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 23 (1): 481–491. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ono, Tsuyoshi, and Ryoko Suzuki. 2020. “Exploration into a new understanding of ‘zero anaphora’ in Japanese everyday talk.” In Fixed Expressions. Building language structure and social action, 41–69. John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, James. 1993. “Type Coercion and Lexical selection.” In Semantics and the Lexicon, ed. by James Pustejovsky, 73–94. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 1992. Pursuit of Truth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1990. The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Suomalainen, Karita, and Mikael Varjo. 2020. “When Personal is Interpersonal. Organizing Interaction with Deictically Open Personal Constructions in Finnish Everyday Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 168: 98–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, Marilyn, Masayo Iida, and Sharon Cote. 1995. “Japanese Discourse and the Process of Centering.” Computational Linguistics 20 (2): 193–233.Google Scholar