This study examines the link between other-initiated repair (OIR) turn formats comprising the “what” token in Japanese and Korean and the problem types handled by them. It especially concentrates on the distinction between “open class repair initiators” (Drew, 1997) and OIR that fixes on a particular referential element in the problem-source turn. Whereas prosody holds an important role in differentiating the two in Korean, Japanese need to depend on postpositional particles. The study also discusses one type of OIR turn format in Japanese, nani ga (‘what’ followed by the nominative particle ga), with deviating functioning and proposes that nani ga has experienced a process of pragmatic specialization and that it is consequently dealt with by speakers as an unanalyzed fraction employed for particular pragmatic goals.