Publications

Publication details [#59329]

Ono, Tsuyoshi and Kaori Kabata, eds. 2014. Usage-based Approaches to Japanese Grammar. Towards the understanding of human language. (Studies in Language Companion Series 156). John Benjamins. ix, 308 pp.
Publication type
Book – edited volume
Publication language
English
Language as a subject

Annotation

This volume brings together papers that take usage-based approaches to study the nature of human language, with a focus on the grammar of Japanese. The 12 chapters provide a rich array of data and methodologies, with topics ranging from phonology, modality, and grammatical morphemes, to sentential construction and discourse-level phenomena such as turn-taking, speech register, and language change. As a whole, they demonstrate that usage-based linguistics illuminates various phenomena in the language that could not have been well accounted for by resorting solely to a formal theory such as the Universal-Grammar-based approach. Reflecting theoretical, methodological, and technological advancements made in and outside the field of cognitive-functional linguistics in recent years, the papers contained in this volume, both individually and collectively, have significant implications towards linguistics in general and Japanese linguistics in particular.