Publications

Publication details [#32028]

Moore, Harumi. 2003. Japanese ka-indefinites and the semantic domain of unknown to the speaker. Journal of Pragmatics 35 (4) : 589–614.

Publication type

Article in journal

Publication language

English

Keywords

indefinite expression | referent | speaker's position

Language as a subject

English | Japanese

Place, Publisher

Elsevier

ISBN

0378-2166

Journal WWW

www.sciencedirect.com/web-editions

Annotation

Through comparison with English indefinite expressions, this paper argues that the Japanese ka-indefinite expresses the speaker's lack of knowledge of the referents' identity, rather than indefiniteness.