Perspectives on Topicalization
The case of Japanese wa
Within the field of Japanese linguistics, few areas have generated as much controversy as the morpheme wa; traditionally described as a marker of old or contrasted information, its function as a discourse marker has also been studied. This work aims to deepen the understanding of wa through careful examination of the particle at both sentence and discourse levels in old Japanese as well as present-day Japanese. Previous studies have concentrated on syntactic analyses of wa. The contributors to this volume challenge the old approach and uncover new properties of wa. The four topics discussed are: wa in Narrative and Expository Discourse; wa and other Syntactic Phenomena; Historical Perspectives on wa and Pragmatic Perspectives on wa.
[Typological Studies in Language, 14] 1987. xi, 307 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 3 October 2011
Published online on 3 October 2011
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Preface | p. vii
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Part I: Wa in narrative and expository discourse
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The use of wa as a cohesion marker in Japanese oral narrativesPatricia M. Clancy and Pamela A. Downing | p. 3
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Thematization as a staging device in the Japanese narrativeSenko K. Maynard | p. 57
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Thematization, assumed familiarity, staging, and syntactic binding in JapaneseJohn Hinds | p. 83
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Identifiability, scope-setting, and the particle wa: A study of Japanese spoken expository discourseShoichi Iwasaki | p. 107
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A study of the so-called topic wa in passages from Tolstoi, Lawrenceand Faulkner (of course, in Japanese translation)S.-Y. Kuroda | p. 143
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Part II: Wa and other syntactic phenomena
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The role of wa in negationNaomi Hanaoka McGloin | p. 165
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Wa and the WH phraseShigeru Miyagawa | p. 185
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Part III: Historical perspectives on wa
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Functions of the theme marker wa from synchronic and diachronic perspectivesNoriko Fujii Ueno | p. 221
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Wa in diachronic perspectiveCharles M. De Wolf | p. 265
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Part IV: Pragmatic perspectives on wa
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How relevant is a functional notion of communicative orientation to ga and wa?Seiichi Makino | p. 293
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Abbreveations | p. 307
“This volume will appeal to a wide range of linguists, not simply those who study Japanese. It succeeds in raising new questions about the functions of wa, and will stimulate new research.”
The Journal of Asian Studies, Noriko Nagai, Duke University
Cited by (11)
Cited by 11 other publications
Yamaguchi, Toshiko
2022. Reanalysis of contrastive -wa in Japanese. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 423 ff. 
Ono, Tsuyoshi & Sandra A. Thompson
2020. What can Japanese conversation tell us about ‘NP’?. In The ‘Noun Phrase’ across Languages [Typological Studies in Language, 128], ► pp. 315 ff.
Nakamura-Delloye, Yayoi
2014. Eléments initiaux dans la phrase japonaise – Spécificité ou universalité ? –. Corpus :13 ► pp. 221 ff.
Teng, Minchun
2012. Using a hybrid methodology in the analysis of the topic and non-topic markers wa and ga in Chinese-to-Japanese translation. Across Languages and Cultures 13:2 ► pp. 247 ff.
Nakamura, Hiroaki
2008. Left-Peripheral and Sentence-Internal Topics in Japanese. In New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4914], ► pp. 160 ff.
NISHIDA, KOICHI
2007. Pragmaticalization and the History of Japanese Discourse Markers (N. Onodera, Japanese Discourse Markers: Synchronic and Diachronic Discourse Analysis). ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 24:1 ► pp. 184 ff.
Kilicaslan, Yilmaz
2004. Syntax of information structure in Turkish. Linguistics 42:4
Klingler, Dominique
2003. Spécificité du dispositif créé par le marqueur wa en japonais comparaison avec le français. Travaux de linguistique 47:2 ► pp. 163 ff.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Richard B. Dasher
2001. Regularity in Semantic Change,
Bateman, John A.
1991. Uncovering textual meanings: a case study involving systemic-functional resources for the generation of Japanese texts. In Natural Language Generation in Artificial Intelligence and Computational Linguistics [The Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science, 119], ► pp. 125 ff.
[no author supplied]
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Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General