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Part of
Information-Structural Perspectives on Discourse Particles
Edited by Pierre-Yves Modicom and Olivier Duplâtre
[Studies in Language Companion Series 213] 2020
► pp. 161–176

Chapter 6
Types and functions of wa-marked DPs and their structural distribution in a Japanese sentence

| Meio University

This paper is devoted to the Japanese particle wa. We argue that a Japanese sentence has a CP peripheral structure, in which multiple wa-marked phrases can sit. The left peripheral structure in CP territory includes Topic Phrases (TopP) that host Thematic Topics (TT) in sentence-initial positions or Contrastive Topics (CT) elsewhere. These topics correspond to DPs marked with the particle wa. We argue that a Japanese sentence can involve multiple wa-marked phrases. In addition, the left peripheral structure also involves one Focus Phrase (FocP), the locus for Exhaustive Identificational-Focus (EI-Focus) elements. This FocP is the slot for focally-stressed WA-marked DPs. Our crucial point is that, unlike wa-marked phrases, a Japanese sentence has only one WA-marked phrase.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The definition of topics
  • 3.Overview of Nakamura (2017)
  • 4.Paul and Whitman (2017) on Chinese and Japanese topic constructions
  • 5.Japanese data with multipe wa-marked phrases
  • 6.Japanese left periperal structure
  • 7.Theoretical implications this paper suggests
  • 8.Conclusion and future issues
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 4 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.213.06nak
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Cited by 1 other publications

Nakamura, Koichiro
2021. Chapter 8. Another argument for the differences among wa-marked phrases. In Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 267], ► pp. 162 ff. DOI logo

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