1.Introduction

There is a growing body of work on placeholders (PHs) in language studies (Hayashi and Yoon 2006Hayashi, Makoto, and Kyung-Eun Yoon 2006 “A Cross-Linguistic Exploration of Demonstratives in Interaction: With Particular Reference to the Context of Word-Formulation Trouble.” Studies in Language 30 (3): 485–540. ; Amiridze et al. 2010Amiridze, Nino, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan eds. 2010 Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ; see Seraku 2020Seraku, Tohru 2020 “Placeholders in Yoron Ryukyuan: A View from Functional Discourse Grammar.” Lingua 245: 1–18. for further references). A PH is used to fill in the syntactic slot of a target word when (i) a speaker has no immediate access to the target word or (ii) though the target word is accessible, she prefers to avoid verbalising it for contextual reasons. For illustration, consider English what-d’you-call-it in (1).

(1)

Mary: John, where’s the what-d’you-call-it?

John: I put it back in the toolbox. (Enfield 2003Enfield, Nick 2003 “The Definition of WHAT-d’you-call-it: Semantics and Pragmatics of Recognitional Deixis.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (1): 101–117. , 103)11.In examples cited from previous studies or corpora, minor amendments were made for consistency purposes. For glossing, we adopt the Leipzig Glossing Rules, except for adn ‘adnominal,’ desid ‘desiderative,’ emph ‘emphatic,’ fem ‘feminine,’ ger ‘gerund,’ hon ‘honorific,’ mas ‘masculine,’ mm ‘modal marker,’ neu ‘neuter,’ ph ‘placeholder,’ recp ‘reciprocal,’ tag ‘tag question,’ and temp ‘temporal.’ Japanese examples are notated in the Hepburn system (except that long vowels are transcribed as aa for /aː/, uu for /uː/, ee for /eː/, and oo for /oː/), and Korean examples in the Yale system.

Mary is using an electric drill and needs a chuck key, but she cannot immediately recall the expression chuck key. Therefore, she saturates its syntactic slot with the PH what-d’you-call-it. In this case, Mary uses the PH because the target word, chuck key, is inaccessible to her due to memory lapse. Another telling example of PHs comes from the novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling 1997). Consider Harry’s utterance, said of Lord Voldemort: What happened to Vo-… to you-know-who? The target word Voldemort is accessible to Harry, but he resorts to the PH you-know-who to avoid verbalising it because the name is taboo.

It is sometimes claimed that PHs are expressions that stand for a word or phrase (Cheung 2015Cheung, Lawrence 2015 “Uttering the Unutterable with Wh-Placeholders.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 24 (3): 271–308. ; Seraku 2020Seraku, Tohru 2020 “Placeholders in Yoron Ryukyuan: A View from Functional Discourse Grammar.” Lingua 245: 1–18. among others). In the present article, I cast doubt on this claim, pointing out that a speaker/writer may use a PH when she does not have in mind a specific lexical form and in some such instances, intends to refer to an arbitrary entity (e.g. person, object, action, event, proposition). This claim is substantiated by a variety of original data from Japanese, Korean, Romanian, and Bulgarian.

There are various types of lexical or grammatical origins of PHs, including interrogative clauses (e.g. what-d’you-call-it), demonstratives, wh words, and semantically bleached items (Podlesskaya 2010Podlesskaya, Vera 2010 “Parameters for Typological Variation of Placeholders.” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 11–32. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. , 12–13). Arguably, the most prevalent lexical source is demonstratives. In fact, there is a wealth of studies on demonstrative-derived PHs in Japanese (see Section 2); the present work complements these with new data on Japanese wh-derived PHs. Wh-derived PHs are also attested in Korean, but not in Romanian and Bulgarian. For the latter languages, demonstrative-derived PHs are analysed. I show that PHs may be used to refer to an arbitrary entity in all these languages, irrespective of their origins (i.e. demonstrative, wh word) and their categories (i.e. nominal, predicative).

Section 2 begins by defining PHs in more explicit terms to further pinpoint the issues to be addressed in this article. Section 3 then illustrates the arbitrary-referential function of PHs by providing a detailed analysis of wh-derived PHs in Japanese, and Section 4 presents further evidence from Korean, Romanian, and Bulgarian. Finally, Section 5 summarises the primary findings of this study and considers future prospects.

2.The issues: The referential types of placeholders

Though PHs are rather a marginal topic in linguistics, there is no shortage of previous studies (Rubino 1996Rubino, Carl 1996 “Morphological Integrity in Ilocano: A Corpus-Based Study of the Production of Polymorphemic Words in a Polysynthetic Language.” Studies in Language 20 (3): 633–666. ; Matras 1998Matras, Yaron 1998 “Deixis and Deictic Oppositions in Discourse: Evidence from Romani.” Journal of Pragmatics 29 (4): 393–428. ; Kitano 1999Kitano, Hiroaki 1999 “On Interaction and Grammar: Evidence from One Use of the Japanese Demonstrative Are (‘that’).” Pragmatics 9 (3): 383–400. ; Kim and Suh 2002Kim, Kyu-Hyun, and Kyung-Hee Suh 2002 “Demonstratives as Prospective Indexicals: Ku and Ce in Korean Conversation.” In Japanese/Korean Linguistics 10, ed. by Noriko Akatsuka, Susan Strauss, and Bernard Comrie. 192–205. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.; Enfield 2003Enfield, Nick 2003 “The Definition of WHAT-d’you-call-it: Semantics and Pragmatics of Recognitional Deixis.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (1): 101–117. ; Jucker et al. 2003Jucker, Andreas, Sara Smith, and Tanja Lüdge 2003 “Interactive Aspects of Vagueness in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (12): 1737–1369. ; Huang and Tanangkingsing 2005Huang, Huei-ju, and Michael Tanangkingsing 2005 “Repair in Verb-Initial Languages.” Language and Linguistics 6 (4): 575–597.; Wouk 2005Wouk, Fay 2005 “The Syntax of Repairs in Indonesian.” Discourse Studies 7 (2): 237–258. ; Hayashi and Yoon 2006Hayashi, Makoto, and Kyung-Eun Yoon 2006 “A Cross-Linguistic Exploration of Demonstratives in Interaction: With Particular Reference to the Context of Word-Formulation Trouble.” Studies in Language 30 (3): 485–540. ; Amiridze et al. 2010Amiridze, Nino, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan eds. 2010 Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ; Hengeveld and Keizer 2011Hengeveld, Kees, and Evelien Keizer 2011 “Non-Straightforward Communication.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (7): 1962–1976. ; Cheung 2015Cheung, Lawrence 2015 “Uttering the Unutterable with Wh-Placeholders.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 24 (3): 271–308. ; Palacios Martínez and Núñez Pertejo 2015Palacios Martínez, Ignacio, and Paloma Núñez Pertejo 2015 ““Go up to Miss Thingy.” “He’s Probably Like a Whatsit or Something.” Placeholders in Focus: The Differences in Use between Teenagers and Adults in Spoken English.” Pragmatics 25 (3): 425–451. ; Lee et al. 2017Lee, Heeju, Danjie Su, and Hongyin Tao 2017 “A Crosslinguistic Study of Some Extended Uses of What-Based Interrogative Expressions in Chinese, English, and Korean.” Chinese Language and Discourse 8 (2): 137–173. ; Tárnyiková 2019Tárnyiková, Jarmila 2019 “English Placeholders as Manifestations of Vague Language: Their Role in Social Interaction.” Brno Studies in English 45 (2): 201–216. ; Seraku 2020Seraku, Tohru 2020 “Placeholders in Yoron Ryukyuan: A View from Functional Discourse Grammar.” Lingua 245: 1–18. ). Seraku’s (2020Seraku, Tohru 2020 “Placeholders in Yoron Ryukyuan: A View from Functional Discourse Grammar.” Lingua 245: 1–18. , 2) definition of PHs is summarised in (2).

Similar definitions are also found in other studies (e.g. Kitano 1999Kitano, Hiroaki 1999 “On Interaction and Grammar: Evidence from One Use of the Japanese Demonstrative Are (‘that’).” Pragmatics 9 (3): 383–400. ; Enfield 2003Enfield, Nick 2003 “The Definition of WHAT-d’you-call-it: Semantics and Pragmatics of Recognitional Deixis.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (1): 101–117. ; Amiridze et al. 2010Amiridze, Nino, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan eds. 2010 Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ; Cheung 2015Cheung, Lawrence 2015 “Uttering the Unutterable with Wh-Placeholders.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 24 (3): 271–308. ; Palacios Martínez and Núñez Pertejo 2015Palacios Martínez, Ignacio, and Paloma Núñez Pertejo 2015 ““Go up to Miss Thingy.” “He’s Probably Like a Whatsit or Something.” Placeholders in Focus: The Differences in Use between Teenagers and Adults in Spoken English.” Pragmatics 25 (3): 425–451. ), with variations in labels and extension. Thus there are alternative terms for PHs, including vague word (Kaye 1990Kaye, Alan 1990 “Whatchamacallem: A Consideration of Thingummies, Doohickeys and Other Vague Words.” English Today 6 (1): 70–73. ), nonsense word (Crystal 1995Crystal, David 1995 “In Search of English: A Traveler’s Guide.” ELT Journal 49 (2): 107–121. ), and dummy (Hengeveld and Keizer 2011Hengeveld, Kees, and Evelien Keizer 2011 “Non-Straightforward Communication.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (7): 1962–1976. ). And some scholars adopt a broader definition, subsuming PHs. Fox’s (2010)Fox, Barbara 2010 “Introduction.” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 1–9. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. use of filler includes PHs, interjective fillers (e.g. uh), and other expressions (e.g. y’know).

Definition (2) contains two important ingredients. Firstly, a PH is a filling-in device in that it saturates the syntactic slot of the target word. In (1), what-d’you-call-it saturates a nominal slot, its nominal status being signalled by the article the. In this respect, PHs are distinguished from interjective fillers such as uh in Can you pass me, uh, that mag?, which occupies neither a nominal nor a predicative slot.

Secondly, there are two types of motive for using a PH, numbered as (i) and (ii) in (2). As for motive (i), a typical situation is that a speaker/writer has no immediate access to the target word for cognitive reasons. She may not be able to retrieve the target word due to memory lapse (see (1)). Alternatively, if she is reading a passage aloud, characters may be illegible (Cheung 2015Cheung, Lawrence 2015 “Uttering the Unutterable with Wh-Placeholders.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 24 (3): 271–308. , 276). Use of a PH in these situations may engender further effects; it may help the speaker to hold her conversation turn (Kitano 1999Kitano, Hiroaki 1999 “On Interaction and Grammar: Evidence from One Use of the Japanese Demonstrative Are (‘that’).” Pragmatics 9 (3): 383–400. , 389–390) or may invite the hearer to jointly search for the target word (Keevallik 2010Keevallik, Leelo 2010 “The Interactional Profile of a Placeholder: The Estonian Demonstrative See .” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 139–172. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. , 157).

As for motive (ii), the target word may be taboo in the community (see the earlier example of you-know-who in Section 1) or contextually inappropriate, as shown in (3).

In other situations, a speaker may withhold the target word to mitigate its negative impact on the hearer or to enhance solidarity of conversation participants (Enfield 2003Enfield, Nick 2003 “The Definition of WHAT-d’you-call-it: Semantics and Pragmatics of Recognitional Deixis.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (1): 101–117. , 106–108).

Following Seraku (2020Seraku, Tohru 2020 “Placeholders in Yoron Ryukyuan: A View from Functional Discourse Grammar.” Lingua 245: 1–18. , 2) and others, I have so far assumed that PHs stand for a target word, but this does not necessarily seem to be the case. In some instances, a speaker seems to use a PH not as a substitute for a specific word, but as a placeholder for a concept. That is, a speaker may have only some vague idea that is difficult to verbalise, or she may find it troublesome to search for a word suited to express her intended concept, or she may just not think about what word she should use because a PH allows her to form her utterance without being specific.22.I am grateful for several comments from one of the reviewers which led to clarification of this point. Thus we could interpret Mary’s utterance in (1) as indicating that she only entertains some concept (e.g. tool for using a drill) without thinking about the word chuck key and utters what-d’you-call-it to save the effort to search for a specific word. In this article, I aim to make a case for the claim that the notion of “target word” is not pertinent to some usages of PHs. More specifically, I show that a PH may be used to hold a place for a concept (rather than a linguistic item) and that in some instances, it serves as a basis for referring to an arbitrary entity. This claim is substantiated by a detailed analysis of wh-derived PHs in Japanese (Section 3) and further corroborated by a cross-linguistic survey of wh-derived PHs in Korean and demonstrative-derived PHs in Romanian and Bulgarian (Section 4).

These topics have been understudied in the extant literature on the languages concerned. Firstly, little work has been carried out on Romanian and Bulgarian PHs; Podlesskaya (2010Podlesskaya, Vera 2010 “Parameters for Typological Variation of Placeholders.” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 11–32. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. , 15) mentions the Bulgarian PHs tova and takovam, but without any examples. Secondly, wh-derived PHs in Japanese and Korean have hardly been analysed, despite extensive studies on demonstrative-derived PHs in these languages. In Japanese, the PH are is derived from the distal demonstrative are ‘that’ (e.g. Kitano 1999Kitano, Hiroaki 1999 “On Interaction and Grammar: Evidence from One Use of the Japanese Demonstrative Are (‘that’).” Pragmatics 9 (3): 383–400. ; Hayashi and Yoon 2006Hayashi, Makoto, and Kyung-Eun Yoon 2006 “A Cross-Linguistic Exploration of Demonstratives in Interaction: With Particular Reference to the Context of Word-Formulation Trouble.” Studies in Language 30 (3): 485–540. ; Suga 2018Suga, Ayumi 2018 Soogokooi-niokeru shijihyoogen. [Demonstrative expressions in interaction] Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo Publishing.; Seraku et al. 2021Seraku, Tohru, Min-Young Park, and Sayaka Sakaguchi 2021 “A Grammatical Description of the Placeholder Are in Spontaneous Japanese.” Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 50 (1): 65–93. ).33.The demonstrative system of Japanese is tripartite, traditionally distinguished in terms of distance categories: (i) proximal (near speaker), (ii) medial (near hearer), and (iii) distal (away from speaker and hearer; see Takubo 2020Takubo, Yukinori 2020 “Nominal Deixis in Japanese.” In Handbook of Japanese Semantics and Pragmatics, ed. by Wesley Jacobsen and Yukinori Takubo. 687–732. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton. for references). Of these three categories, only the distal demonstratives (e.g. pronominal are ‘that,’ locative asoko ‘there’) may serve as PHs. Consider Example (4). Prior to this excerpt, a participant has been talking about her elderly mother’s strange behaviour (e.g. putting away clothes where they do not belong), and after a few exchanges, another participant utters (4).

The speaker seems to produce the PH are to avoid an expression that comes with a negative-flavoured meaning, such as o-toshi-no mondai ‘an age-related problem.’ In Korean, the PH ceke is derived from the distal demonstrative ceke ‘that’ (Suh 2000Suh, Kyung-Hee 2000 “Distal Demonstratives as Fillers.” Language Research 36: 887–903.; Kim and Suh 2002Kim, Kyu-Hyun, and Kyung-Hee Suh 2002 “Demonstratives as Prospective Indexicals: Ku and Ce in Korean Conversation.” In Japanese/Korean Linguistics 10, ed. by Noriko Akatsuka, Susan Strauss, and Bernard Comrie. 192–205. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.; Yoon 2003Yoon, Kyung-Eun 2003 “Demonstratives in Korean Conversation as Interactional Resources.” Crossroads of Language, Interaction, and Culture 5: 67–91.; Hayashi and Yoon 2006Hayashi, Makoto, and Kyung-Eun Yoon 2006 “A Cross-Linguistic Exploration of Demonstratives in Interaction: With Particular Reference to the Context of Word-Formulation Trouble.” Studies in Language 30 (3): 485–540. ).44.As in Japanese, the demonstrative system of Korean is also tripartite, divided into three categories: (i) proximal (near speaker), (ii) medial (near hearer), and (iii) distal (away from speaker and hearer). Unlike Japanese, where only the distal forms act as PHs (see footnote 3), Korean allows both the distal form ceke and the medial form kuke to serve as PHs (Hayashi and Yoon 2006Hayashi, Makoto, and Kyung-Eun Yoon 2006 “A Cross-Linguistic Exploration of Demonstratives in Interaction: With Particular Reference to the Context of Word-Formulation Trouble.” Studies in Language 30 (3): 485–540. , 491). Consider Example (5), where the speaker is talking to her guest at her home.

The speaker likely cannot access chicukheyikh ‘cheese cake’ and fills in its syntactic slot with the PH ceke. Despite extensive work on PHs in Japanese and Korean, wh-derived PHs in these languages have been largely ignored. An exception is Lee et al. (2017)Lee, Heeju, Danjie Su, and Hongyin Tao 2017 “A Crosslinguistic Study of Some Extended Uses of What-Based Interrogative Expressions in Chinese, English, and Korean.” Chinese Language and Discourse 8 (2): 137–173. , who provide only a few cases of the what-derived PHs mwe and mwusun in Korean. Wh-derived PHs are in fact found in many languages: Nahavaq (Austronesian; Dimock 2010Dimock, Laura 2010 “Fillers and Placeholders in Nahavaq.” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 119–137. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ), Udi/Agul (Caucasian; Ganenkov et al. 2010Ganenkov, Dmitry, Yury Lander, and Timur Maisak 2010 “From Interrogatives to Placeholders in Udi and Agul Spontaneous Narratives.” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 95–118. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ), Papuan Malay (Kluge 2015Kluge, Angela 2015 A Grammar of Papuan Malay. Berlin: Language Science Press. ), and Mandarin (Cheung 2015Cheung, Lawrence 2015 “Uttering the Unutterable with Wh-Placeholders.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 24 (3): 271–308. ). In Sections 3–4, I will describe a wide range of wh-derived PHs in Japanese and Korean, with non-trivial cross-language differences.

Previous studies use data from various sources: (i) spoken corpora or self-collected spoken materials (Hayashi 2003Hayashi, Makoto 2003 Joint Utterance Construction in Japanese Conversation. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ; Dimock 2010Dimock, Laura 2010 “Fillers and Placeholders in Nahavaq.” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 119–137. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ; Keevallik 2010Keevallik, Leelo 2010 “The Interactional Profile of a Placeholder: The Estonian Demonstrative See .” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 139–172. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ), (ii) written corpora (including web data) or literary texts (Amiridze 2010Amiridze, Nino 2010 “Placeholder Verbs in Modern Georgian.” In Fillers, Pauses and Placeholders, ed. by Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, and Margaret Maclagan. 67–94. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ; Hengeveld and Keizer 2011Hengeveld, Kees, and Evelien Keizer 2011 “Non-Straightforward Communication.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (7): 1962–1976. ; Seraku et al. 2021Seraku, Tohru, Min-Young Park, and Sayaka Sakaguchi 2021 “A Grammatical Description of the Placeholder Are in Spontaneous Japanese.” Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 50 (1): 65–93. ), and (iii) elicited data (Enfield 2003Enfield, Nick 2003 “The Definition of WHAT-d’you-call-it: Semantics and Pragmatics of Recognitional Deixis.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (1): 101–117. ; Cheung 2015Cheung, Lawrence 2015 “Uttering the Unutterable with Wh-Placeholders.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 24 (3): 271–308. ; Seraku 2020Seraku, Tohru 2020 “Placeholders in Yoron Ryukyuan: A View from Functional Discourse Grammar.” Lingua 245: 1–18. ). The present study uses spoken and written corpora for Japanese (see the References section for the list of the corpora consulted), but most data comes from the written corpora (BCCWJ, NWJC). This is because relevant examples are found mostly in the written corpora, probably due to the size of the spoken corpus (CSJ): BCCWJ contains 104.3 million words, and CSJ only 7.52 million words. My written data are mostly from conversations in novels or addressee-oriented (e.g. a reply to a question on a Q&A site), but ideally these will need to be complemented by more spoken materials, an issue for future work. For Romanian and Bulgarian, I examine elicited examples. The analysis will eventually need to be supplemented by spontaneous data for these languages, too.

3. Wh-derived placeholders in Japanese

3.1Descriptive preliminaries

Japanese features a number of wh words, including nani ‘what,’ dono ‘which,’ dare ‘who,’ itsu ‘when,’ doko ‘where,’ and naze ‘why.’ An example of nani is given in (6).

(6)

Nani-o

what-acc

kai-mashi-ta-ka?

buy-hon-pst-q

‘What did you buy?’ [Japanese]

As shown in (6), wh-interrogative sentences usually end with a question particle such as ka. A distinctive property of wh words is that whilst they may be case-marked, they are never topic-marked. Thus, Example (6), where nani is accusative-marked, is grammatical, whereas Example (7), where nani is topic-marked, is ungrammatical.

(7)

* Nani-wa

what-top

kai-mashi-ta-ka?

buy-hon-pst-q

(Intended ‘What did you buy?’) [Japanese]

Another notable property of wh words is that the interrogative force may be strengthened by emphatic ittai, as illustrated in (8).

(8)

Ittai

emph

nani-o

what-acc

kai-mashi-ta-ka?

buy-hon-pst-q

‘What on earth did you buy?’ [Japanese]

Each wh word has a standard orthographic form. Thus, nani ‘what’ is usually written in kanji (何), and doko ‘where’ in hiragana (どこ).55.The Japanese writing system includes “hiragana” (mainly used for native words), “katakana” (mainly used for foreign words), and “kanji” (adapted Chinese letters); see Shibatani (1990Shibatani, Masayoshi 1990 The Languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 125–131). Finally, there is a morphological property specific to nani: nani has the allomorph nan before /t/, /d/, and /n/. This is illustrated in (9).

(9)

Nan-no

what-gen

hanashi-o

story-acc

kiki-tai-desu-ka?

listen.to-desid-hon-q

‘What story do you want to listen to?’ [Japanese]

Among Japanese wh words, only nani ‘what’ (and its variant forms discussed later) is used as a conventionally established PH form.66. Seraku et al. (2020)Seraku, Tohru, Sooyun Park, and Yile Yu 2020 “Non-conventional Placeholders and Morphosyntactic Remedies: Evidence from East Asian Languages.” Ms., Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Kobe University, and Shiga University. report that PHs that are derived from non-nani wh words such as dare ‘who’ and itsu ‘when’ are conventionally not established, though there are certain morpho-syntactic operations to stabilise their PH status. In the present article, I focus on the fully established PH form nani. As will be pointed out in due course, this PH does not exhibit the properties of wh words mentioned above. For ease of reference, these properties are listed again in (10).

(10)

Properties of interrogative wh words in Japanese

1. A wh-interrogative sentence ends with a question particle.

2. Wh words cannot be marked with the topic particle -wa.

3. The interrogative force may be strengthened by ittai.

4. Each wh word has a standard orthographic form. (Nani is usually written in kanji.)

5. Nani is realised as nan before /t/, /d/, and /n/.

3.2Placeholder nani

As pointed out in Section 2, whilst the demonstrative-derived PH are is well described, little attention has been paid to wh-derived PHs. Example (11) shows that the wh word nani ‘what’ can be recruited as a nominal PH.

(11)

[In this blog post, the writer says that she listened to her favourite song by her favourite band and was very moved.]

Sakuya

last.night

kaji-o

housework-acc

oe-te

finish-cvb

yonaka-ni

midnight-temp

keitai

mobile.phone

nigit-te

hold-cvb

reino

in.question

nani

ph

kik-aseteitadaki-mashi-ta.

listen.to-hon-hon-pst

[…]

 

Gookyuu-deshi-ta-yo.

crying.a.lot-cop-pst-fp

‘After finishing housework last night, I listened to you-know-what (= song), holding my mobile phone. I was so moved and cried a lot.’ (BCCWJ) [Japanese]

The use of reino ‘the familiar (N)’ in reino nani suggests that she presumes that, though she does not explicitly mention what she intends to refer to, readers (at least, regular visitors to her blog) will be able to grasp the referent of nani without difficulty. This raises several interpretational possibilities. She might have thought about a specific word (e.g. the song’s title) but chose not to disclose it, expecting that the reader would share some background information and cultural (i.e. musical) taste with her and easily understand what she refers to, perhaps in the hope that the confirmation of their shared taste would enhance their solidarity. Another possibility is that she did not remember the song’s title but entertained some concept relating to the song (e.g. the song that she loves and listened to at the band’s concert) and felt it cumbersome to verbalise it.

Nani in (11) lacks all the properties of interrogative wh words in (10). That is, (a) the sentence does not end with a question particle, (b) nani could be topic-marked as in reino nani-wa (when the familiar song is contrasted with another song), (c) use of the emphatic marker ittai, which must co-occur with an interrogative wh word, is not licensed, and (d) nani is written in katakana (ナニ) rather than in kanji (何). Property (10e) is not applicable in (11) because nani is not followed by a morpheme starting with /t/, /d/ or /n/ but in (12) it is followed by -no and still realised as nani rather than nan.

(12)

[On a Q&A site, a woman has written about her boyfriend, who is often naked when he is at home. She asked how she could get him to put on clothes, and someone replies.]

Fuku-o

clothes-acc

ki-nai-nara

wear-neg-cond

kare-no

3sg-gen

ie-ni-wa

house-all-top

ika-nai-to

go-neg-comp

danko

adamantly

shuchoosu-bekidesu.

claim-should.hon

[…]

 

Nani-no

ph-gen

toki-igai-wa

time-except-top

[…]

 

ifuku-o

clothes-acc

minimatot-temorau-shikaarimasen.

wear-ben-have.to.hon

‘You should insist that if he does not wear clothes, you will not visit his house. Except for whatsit (= intercourse), he has to wear clothes.’ (BCCWJ) [Japanese]

The writer appears to deploy the PH nani to avoid a sexual term such as sekkusu ‘sex.’ It is also possible that she did not think about such a specific word and had in mind only a vague concept relating to intercourse, using nani to save her the effort of searching for a suitable word.

In (13), it is not even possible to assume that nani is used to stand for a specific word.

(13)

[In this book, the writer states that one of the most important issues for the parents of students is who is assigned to their children as their class teacher.]

Kissaten-ni

cafe-loc

tamuroshi-ta

gather.in.large.numbers-pst

okaasan

mother

guruupu-ga

group-nom

ookina

loud

koe-de

voice-inst

hanashi-at-teir-assharu

talk-recp-ipfv-hon

kookee-ni

scene-all

yoku

often

dekuwashi-masu.

come.across-hon

“Kotoshi-wa

this.year-top

nani-sensee-nan-yo.

ph-teacher-cop-fp

Yokat-ta-waa.”

good-pst-fp

“Maa

oh

yokat-ta-nee.

good-pst-fp

Uchi-wa

1sg-top

nani-sensee.

ph-teacher

Gesshori.”-toitta

depressing-like

chooshi-desu.

manner-cop

‘I often see a group of mothers talking loudly at a cafe. They say things like “This year, the teacher of my child is Mr. So-and-so. It’s a relief!” “Oh, that’s good. The teacher of my child is Mr. So-and-so. It’s depressing.”.’ (BCCWJ) [Japanese]

There are two instances of nani, and they do not stand for a specific word. Note that -sensee is the title for teachers and requires that its preceding slot be occupied by a proper name. The writer, who does not think of a specific name, resorts to the PH nani to fill in this slot. In this case, nani, together with -sensee, holds a place for a concept indicating an arbitrary teacher. This arbitrary reference is essential for explaining an issue important for the parents of students in general.

When a PH is used to refer to an arbitrary entity, it is not possible to replace the PH with some specific expression and refer to a certain entity denoted by the expression. For instance, it is not possible to replace nani in (13) with a specific proper name such as Takahashi and refer to an individual called Takahashi. This sharply contrasts with the cases where a PH is used to substitute for a target word; in these cases, one may replace a PH with a specific target form and refer to a certain entity denoted by the form.

Use of nani in (13) is akin to the usage of English capital letters for variables in general statements. Consider (14), which is meant to be part of a contract form.

(14)

A and B agree on the terms and conditions stated below.

Each of the capital letters A and B fills in the slot that is potentially occupied by a specific proper name, but such specific names are neither relevant nor intended here, at least until the contract form is actually presented to concrete individuals. The capital letters in (14) are used to refer to arbitrary, unspecified individuals, and this arbitrary reference enables the contract form to apply to anyone who is actually involved in the contract.

In a nutshell, the definition of PH in (2) is only partially correct; it is not exhaustive in two respects. First, a PH can be used not only when a speaker/writer substitutes for a target word, but also when she just entertains some concept and has no particular lexical item in mind. Second, when a PH is used to hold a place for a concept, it may serve as a basis for referring to an arbitrary entity. In the ensuing subsections, I offer more examples of arbitrary reference based on the description of the PH nani and its variants.

3.3Predicative variants of nani

The nominal PH form nani has a predicative variant nanisuru (where suru is a light verb meaning ‘do’). As can be seen in (15), nanisuru acts as a verbal PH.

(15)

[Someone has read a blog article about horsehair worms and posts her reply.]

Kodomo-no

child-gen

koro

time

kamakiri-o

mantis-acc

nanisuru-to

ph-when

hariganemushi-ga

horsehair.worm-nom

deteki-ta

come.out-pst

koto-o

thing-acc

omoidashi-masu.

remember-hon

‘I remember a time in my childhood when I X-ed (= cut up the body of) a mantis and saw horsehair worms come out of it.’ (NWJC) [Japanese]

The writer apparently relies on nanisuru to avoid producing a verb (or a verb phrase) that designates a violent action such as saku ‘split (the body of a mantis)’ or to hold a place for a concept such as tear up, with a violent meaning in the present context.

As illustrated in (16), there is another predicative variant: nanidesu.77. Nani in nanidesu is followed by the copula -desu, a morpheme starting with /d/, but it is still realised as nani. This shows that nani in nanidesu is not an interrogative wh word (see (10e) in Section 3.1). I owe this point to Anthony Backhouse.

(16)

[On a Q&A site, someone has asked about the reliability of a Japanese guidebook since the guidebook is sometimes given a disparaging title (here represented as XX). Someone else answers this question.]

XX

XX

yoku

often

ii-masu-ne…

say-hon-fp

demo,

but

nanidesu-yo,

ph-fp

kami

paper

beesu-no

base-gen

joohoo-desu-kara

information-cop-csl

joohoo-ga

information-nom

furuku

old

nat-teshimau

become-pfv

koto-wa

thing-top

shikatanonai-kotodesu.

cannot.be.helped-mm.hon

‘People often call it XX. But it’s you-know-what (= it cannot be helped). Information in the guidebook necessarily gets old because it is published in print form.’ (BCCWJ) [Japanese]

After producing nanidesu the writer subsequently elaborates, but there are several candidates for the referent of the PH. It may be the predicative sequence shikatanonai-kotodesu ‘cannot be helped’ or the clausal sequence kami beesu-no […] shikatanonai-kotodesu. Also, there is another indeterminacy concerning the motive for the use of nanidesu. The writer might have failed to retrieve the target form shikatanonai-kotodesu or have wanted to avoid formulating a lengthy clause.

Example (17) shows that nanisuru may also be used to refer to an arbitrary action.

(17)

[In this post, the writer conveys that writing up a diary every day reduces his stress.]

Boku

1sg

jitsuwa

in.fact

mainichi

every.day

nikki

diary

kai-teru-ndesu.

write-ipfv-mm.hon

Kyoo-wa

today-top

nani-ga

ph-nom

at-ta-toka

happen-pst-etc.

nanishi-ta-toka

ph-pst-etc.

nani

ph

tabe-ta-toka.

eat-pst-etc.

‘In fact, I write in my diary every day, like “Such-and-such happened today,” “I did such-and-such,” “I ate such-and-such,” and so on.’ (SNS post) [Japanese]

It is likely that in producing nanishi- (the infinitive form of nanisuru), the writer did not think about a specific action. He saturates the verbal slot with the PH to refer to an arbitrary action for the sake of explaining what kinds of topics he writes about in his diary. In (17), there are also two occurrences of the PH nani (see Section 3.2); the former refers to an arbitrary event, and the latter to an arbitrary meal.

The above analysis confirms that the PH nani and its verbal variant nanisuru may be used not only to substitute for a target word, but also to refer to an arbitrary entity. The types of arbitrary entities are diverse, including objects (the second instance of nani in (17)), actions (nanisuru in (17)), and events (the first instance of nani in (17)).

3.4Archaic variants of nani

The corpus survey also uncovers archaic variants of the PH nani, such as nanigashi in (18).88.According to the Corpus of Historical Japanese, nanigashi is already attested in Makura-no Sōshi ‘The Pillow Book,’ written in the early 1000s by Sei Shōnagon. Perhaps due to its archaic flavour, there are only two unequivocal cases of nanigashi in CSJ, one of which is presented in (18).

(18)

[The speaker delivers a presentation at an academic conference.]

Nijuugoman

250.thousand

nanasen

seven.thousand

nanigashi-no

ph-gen

tenki-tan’i-chuu

transcription-unit-in

hatsuwa-tan’i-chuu-ni

utterance-unit-in-at

kono

this

tagu-wa

tag-top

rokusen

six.thousand

yonhyaku

four.hundred

juuni-kai

twelve-times

dete-orimashi-ta.

come.out-hon-pst

‘Out of 257, XXX utterance units, this tag appeared 6,412 times.’ (CSJ) [Japanese]

The speaker uses the PH nanigashi to substitute for part of the target word for some reason; he may have supposed that the exact number was not important for the current topic of his presentation, or he may have been reluctant to verbalise the whole number, or he may have simply failed to recall it at the time of speech.

Archaic forms are also used for arbitrary-referential purposes. Let me illustrate this point with another form, nanibee, to add variety to our examples. Unlike nanigashi, nanibee is specifically tailored for nominal reference to humans, probably because -bee in nanibee is a residue of archaic proper names such as Hikobee and Juubee. Example (19) shows that nanibee may be employed to refer to an arbitrary person.

(19)

[The writer writes about a TV programme featuring a village, stating that TV scenes that are impressive to the viewers may be banal to the villagers.]

Mura-toiu

village-so.called

hitotsu-no

one-gen

chiiki

area

shakai-de-no

society-loc-gen

warai-ya

laughter-or

kaidan-wa

ghost.story-top

sono

that

mura-no

village-gen

hitotachi-nitotte

people-for

ichiichi

each.time

setsumeisuru

explain

hitsuyoo-mo

necessity-even

nai

absent

dokodoko-no

ph-gen

nanibee-san-no

ph-Mr-gen

hanashi-deat-tari

story-cop-or

naninani-mori-no

ph-forest-gen

kitsune-no

fox-gen

hanashi-deat-tari-suru.

story-cop-or-do

‘Funny stories or ghost stories in the society of a village may be just banal stories for the villagers, such as the story of Mr. So-and-so at such-and-such place and the story of a fox in such-and-such forest.’ (BCCWJ) [Japanese]99.In (19), the doubled forms dokodoko and naninani are glossed as ph. The latter will be discussed in Section 3.5. For the former, see Seraku et al. (2020)Seraku, Tohru, Sooyun Park, and Yile Yu 2020 “Non-conventional Placeholders and Morphosyntactic Remedies: Evidence from East Asian Languages.” Ms., Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Kobe University, and Shiga University..

In using nanibee, the writer is not referring to any concrete individual. This is evident from warai-ya kaidan, which in this context means funny or ghost stories (of a village) in general. She says that if there is such a story, it will be banal to the villagers. That is, she is just writing about unspecified individuals who may show up in a story. The PH nanibee is deployed here to hold a place for a concept indicating an arbitrary person for the sake of elaborating on “banal stories.”

3.5Doubled variants of nani

There is yet another type of variant, formed by doubling of nani. The PH naninani in (19), used adnominally as in naninani mori ‘such-and-such forest,’ refers to an arbitrary forest. The corpus data include other examples where naninani occurs adnominally such as naninani hiroba ‘such-and-such square’ and naninani ike ‘such-and-such pond.’ In each example, the PH refers to an arbitrary entity (e.g. an arbitrary square). There are also cases where naninani occupies a nominal position. This is illustrated in (20).

(20)

Oishii

delicious

koo

well

naninani-ga

ph-nom

aru-yo-tte

exist-fp-comp

iu-to

say-cond

hotondo

usually

anoo

well

tabe-ni

eat-purp

iku-youna

go-like

taipu-no

type-gen

ningen-desu.

person-cop

‘I am the kind of person such that if I hear someone say “That restaurant serves delicious such-and-such,” I usually go there to eat it.’ (CSJ) [Japanese]

In employing naninani, the speaker does not refer to any definite or specific entity; rather, she utters naninani to hold a place for a concept that indicates an arbitrary meal. This referential act is needed here to illustrate her personality.

A doubled PH form may combine with the copula -dearu, so that the whole cluster serves as a predicative PH. Consider (21).

(21)

[In this book, the writer writes about his personal traits.]

Boku,

1sg

“ Naninanidearu ”-to

ph-quot

dangenshi-tari

assert-or

ronpyoosuru-no

comment-nmlz

suki-janai-nda.

like-neg-mm

‘I don’t like asserting or commenting in the manner of “It is such-and-such!”.’ (BCCWJ) [Japanese]

In the examples of arbitrary reference considered thus far, a PH is used to refer to an arbitrary person, object, action, or event. What is unique about Example (21) is that naninanidearu is used to refer to an arbitrary proposition, as is evident from the fact that the PH functions as the object of dangenshi- ‘assert.’ Given that -to before dangenshi- is a quotation complementiser, naninanidearu can be seen as a clausal PH.

The doubled form naninani has previously been rarely examined, except for Sudo (2008)Sudo, Yasutada 2008 “Quantification into Quotations: Evidence from Japanese Wh-Doublets.” In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 12 , ed. by Atle Grønn. 613–627. Oslo: ILOS. and Kudo (2020)Kudo, Kazuya 2020 “Nihongo Fukakutei Daimeishi Choofuku Hyoogen-no Goika-nitsuite [On the lexicalization of reduplicated underspecified pronominals in Japanese].” Selected Papers from the 44th Meeting of the Kansai Linguistic Society: 29–41.. They claim that naninani is licensed only in quotational environments. This is indeed true of (20)–(21), but it appears to be just a tendency in the light of examples such as (22), where the clauses including naninani are not quoted.

(22)

[The writer writes about the university system in Japan.]

Gakusee-wa

student-top

ichinensee-kara

first.grader-since

naninani-gakubu

ph-faculty

naninani-gakka-ni

ph-department-all

shozokusuru.

belong

Soosuruto

then

sokode-no

there-gen

shudootekina

leading

gakumon-wa

study-top

toozen

naturally

naninani-gakubu

ph-faculty

naninani-gakka-no

ph-department-gen

gakumon-dearu

study-cop

wake-desu-ne.

reason-cop-fp

‘Students belong to such-and-such faculty or such-and-such department from their first year onwards. So their primary studies are naturally those of such-and-such faculty or such-and-such department.’ (BCCWJ) [Japanese]

In the corpora consulted, I did not find any unequivocal cases where naninani substitutes for a specific target word. Such cases may perhaps occur in a larger corpus, but even if naninani never realises the target-substituting function, we can still regard naninani as a PH because, as we have argued, a PH may be exploited not only to substitute for a target word but also to hold a place for a concept.

3.6Summary

It has been argued that (i) Japanese has several types of wh-derived PHs and (ii) these PHs are used not only to substitute for a target word but also to refer to an arbitrary entity. The types of arbitrary referents are quite diverse, ranging from persons, objects, actions, and events to propositions.1010.This diverse range of referents looks miscellaneous, but all of them can be reduced to the notion of “entity” in the sense of Lyons (1977Lyons, John 1977 Semantics, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 442–445). His notion of entity includes “first-order” entities (e.g. person, object), “second-order” entities (e.g. action, event), and “third-order” entities (e.g. proposition). The upshot of this discussion is that the definition of PH in (2) is only partially correct. PHs (at least, Japanese wh-derived PHs) are used not only to substitute for a target word but also to hold a place for a concept. In the latter case, the intended concept may be a specific one or may indicate an arbitrary entity. As will be shown in the next section, the connection between PH forms and the function of arbitrary reference is not accidental but amply attested in several other languages besides Japanese.

4.Evidence from Korean, Romanian, and Bulgarian

The present section offers cross-linguistic evidence for my contention that PHs may be used for arbitrary-referential purposes. To this end, I chose Korean, Romanian (Romance), and Bulgarian (Slavic). Firstly, Korean features wh-derived PHs, but their properties are different from those of Japanese wh-derived PHs in some respects. Secondly, Romanian and Bulgarian feature demonstrative-derived PHs. As we will see, the arbitrary-referential function is found in all these languages, regardless of the origins of PH (i.e. wh word, demonstrative) and the categories of PH (i.e. nominal, verbal).1111.Korean data were mainly collected from the Sejong Corpus. For Romanian and Bulgarian, I asked my informants to create sentences comparable to the examples including what-d’you-call-it (1), you-know-what (Enfield 2003Enfield, Nick 2003 “The Definition of WHAT-d’you-call-it: Semantics and Pragmatics of Recognitional Deixis.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (1): 101–117. , 106), and Japanese nani (e.g. (13)).

4.1Korean

As in Japanese, Korean has a number of wh words such as nwukwu ‘who,’ mwe ‘what,’ encey ‘when,’ eti ‘where,’ and way ‘why.’ Some of these wh words are illustrated in (23)–(24).

(23)

Nwukwu-lul

who-acc

manna-ss-supni-kka?

meet-pst-hon-q

‘Whom did you meet?’ [Korean]

(24)

Encey

when

Cwun-ul

Jun-acc

manna-ss-supni-kka?

meet-pst-hon-q

‘When did you meet Jun?’ [Korean]

Wh-interrogative sentences end in a question particle such as -kka and are usually produced with a rising intonation. In some verb paradigms, a question particle is not used; in such cases, wh-interrogative sentences are still produced with a rising intonation. Further, though Korean wh words may be topic-marked in rhetorical questions (Jung 2017Jung, Sang-Cheol 2017 “Hangobun-no Joohookoozoo-nitsuite [On the information structure of rhetorical questions].” Journal of the Society of Japanese Language and Literature, Japanology 76: 121–142., 134), they generally resist topic-marking. Thus, Examples (23)–(24) become ungrammatical if the wh words are marked with the topic particle -nun, as in *nwukwu-nun and *encey-nun.

Unlike in Japanese, where only nani ‘what’ is utilised as a conventionally established PH form, the Korean wh words mentioned above are more freely used as PHs, except for way ‘why.’ Consider (25).

(25)

Mianhay

sorry

i

this

nelpun

broad.adn

kasum-ey

chest-loc

mwuthye

be.buried.ger

talun

another

nwukwu-lul

ph-acc

sayngkakhaysses-se.

think.of.pst-cvb

Mianhay

sorry

ne-uy

2sg-gen

son-ul

hand-acc

cap-ko

hold-cvb

kelul

walk.adn

ttay-ey-to

when-temp-even

tteollyesses-se,

remember.pst-cvb

ku

that

salam-ul.

person-acc

‘Sorry, I was thinking of another X (= woman) when I held you tightly. Sorry, I was thinking of her even when we walked holding hands together.’ (song lyric) [Korean]

In (25), the man apologises to his girlfriend because he keeps thinking of another woman. The PH nwukwu (< ‘who’) is used to avoid explicitly mentioning the name of the woman. Note that the first sentence in (25), in which nwukwu occurs, does not end with a question particle and that it is produced with a falling intonation.

Since a wh-derived PH is no longer an interrogative wh word, it may be topic-marked even if it does not occur in a rhetorical question. This is shown in (26), an excerpt from a book on psychology.

(26)

Kathun

same

hakkup-uy

homeroom-gen

haksayng-ilcilato

student-despite

nwukwu-nun

ph-top

yelsimhi

hard

kongpwu-ha-ko

study-do-cvb

nwukwu-nun

ph-top

kongpwu-lul

study-acc

yelsimhi

hard

an-han-ta.

neg-do-decl

‘Student X studies hard and student Y does not, even though they are in the same class.’ (Sejong Corpus) [Korean]

Example (26) illustrates the arbitrary-referential function of the PH nwukwu. The point of the excerpt concerns the variability of students’ motivations for learning in general, and the names of specific students are not relevant. The writer uses the PH nwukwu to hold a place for a concept indicating an arbitrary student. This arbitrary-referential act is needed to explain students’ learning motivation in general terms.

Since topic-marking is a reliable morpho-syntactic criterion to distinguish PHs from wh words, I collected examples of topic-marked wh forms: encey-nun ‘when-top,’ eti-nun ‘where-top,’ and mwues-un ‘what-top.’ Given this morpho-syntactic criterion, it is fair to say that all these forms serve as PHs (at least, when not occurring in rhetorical questions). Consider (27), an excerpt from a novel.

(27)

Kulen

such

cali-lul

post-acc

encey-nun

ph-top

tuleka-lye-ko

enter-will-comp

ay-lul

concern-acc

ssu-ko

use-cvb

maksang

actually

tuleka-sen

enter-cvb.top

hwulccek

suddenly

nawa-peli-ko,

come.out-pfv-cvb

totaychey

emph

g-uy

G-gen

simsa-nun

internal.feeling-top

al-takato

know-cond

molul

not.know.adn

il-i-ess-ta.

thing-cop-pst-decl

‘G tried hard to obtain such a post at such-and-such time, but after he actually got it, he suddenly resigned. He was really inscrutable.’ (Sejong Corpus) [Korean]

The writer does not specify the time at which G tried to obtain the post, and there is no reason to assume that such specification is essential in the present discourse context. The PH encey is utilised here to refer to an arbitrary time for the sake of conveying narratively more important information (i.e. ‘G is an inscrutable person.’).

As in the case of Japanese (see Section 3.5), doubling is possible for some Korean wh words such as encey ‘when,’ nwukwu ‘who,’ mwe ‘what,’ and eti ‘where.’ Consider (28), an excerpt from a newspaper column.

(28)

Mwemwe

ph

topki-uy

support-gen

catong-umtap-sepisu

automatic-response-service

cenhwa-mokum-un

telephone-donation-top

kukes-i

that-nom

ciniko-iss-nun

have-ipfv-adn

[…]

 

sahoycek

social

kungcengseng-i

rationality-nom

iss-ciman

exist-but

[…]

 

‘As for the automatic response service of telephone-mediated donations for support of X (= financially challenged people), it has social rationality, but …’ (Sejong Corpus) [Korean]

The writer may have used mwemwe (< ‘what’) to substitute for the target word, a socially sensitive term such as pinkonchung ‘those who financially suffer.’ Alternatively, the writer might just have entertained some concept such as financially challenged people and produced the PH to save the effort of searching for a word that could express this concept.

To sum up, despite some cross-language differences, wh-derived PHs are found in both Japanese and Korean, and at least some of these forms (as in (26)–(27)) may be used to refer to arbitrary entities.

4.2Romanian

In Romanian, PHs are not formed with wh words, but there is a set of PHs deriving from the distal demonstratives ‘that, those.’ Romanian demonstratives are classified in terms of gender (masculine, feminine), number (singular, plural), and distance (proximal, distal). Table 1 shows the distal forms.

Table 1.Distal demonstratives in Romanian

	singular (sg)	plural (pl)
masculine (mas)	ăla	ăia
feminine (fem)	aia	alea

Romanian PHs are illustrated in the examples below. In (29), Maria cannot remember the target word detergent at the time of speech and resorts to the PH ăla.

(29)

[Maria wants to use a washing machine and needs some detergent. She asks David about its whereabouts, but cannot remember the word for ‘detergent.’]

Maria:

David,

D

unde

where

e

cop

ăla?

ph

‘David, where is the what-d’you-call-it (= detergent)?’

David:

L-am

1sg

pus

put

înapoi

back

în

in

dulap

cupboard

sub

under

chiuvetă.

sink

‘I put it back in the cupboard under the sink.’ [Romanian]

In (30), David is aware of the expression papanași, but he utters the PH ăia to mask the target word so that he can please his guests with unexpected desserts.

(30)

[David organised a dinner party for Romanian professors at a university in Japan. In Romania, many people like papanași, traditional desserts of doughnuts covered with soft cheese. Papanași are not generally sold in Japan, and David secretly bought them at a Romanian restaurant in Tokyo. After people finish eating the main dishes, he is about to serve papanași.]

Ei bine,

well

este

cop

timpul

time

să

to

servim

serve

ăia .

ph

‘Well, it is time to serve thingies (= papanași).’ [Romanian]

With an example like (29) above, where the speaker has no immediate access to the target word, all four forms in Table 1 are available. In (30), where the speaker is aware of the target word, there is cross-speaker variation. Some speakers choose a PH form whose number and gender match those of the target word; in (30), ăia matches papanași, a masculine-plural noun. Other speakers use any form in Table 1.

Crucially, Example (31) shows that ăla may also be used to refer to an arbitrary entity.

(31)

[David teaches at a university. He talks with his colleague about what their students often say about classes.]

Nivelul

level

clasei

class

este

cop

diferit

different

în

in

funcție

function

de

of

profesor,

professor

nu?

no

Aud

hear

mereu

always

studenți

student.pl

spunând

saying

“Cursul

course

predat

taught

de

of

profesorul

professor

ăla

ph

este

cop

ușor,

easy

dar

but

cursul

course

predat

taught

de

of

profesorul

professor

ăla

ph

este

cop

dificil.”

difficult

‘The class level is different depending on teachers, isn’t it? I always hear students saying “The class taught by Professor So-and-so is easy, but the class taught by Professor So-and-so is difficult”.’ [Romanian]

Since David’s utterance is a general statement, specific names of professors are irrelevant. So, he uses ăla (sg, mas), combined with profesorul (sg, mas), to refer to an arbitrary professor. In addition to the sg-mas combination, the other possible combinations are also allowed in (31): profesoara aia (sg, fem), profesorii ăia (pl, mas), and profesoarele alea (pl, fem).

4.3Bulgarian

Bulgarian is similar to Romanian in that demonstratives (but not wh words) are recruited as PHs, but there are some cross-language differences. First, in Bulgarian, it is proximal (rather than distal) forms that usually behave as PHs. Bulgarian demonstratives are classified in terms of gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), number (singular, plural), and distance (proximal, distal). Table 2 spells out the proximal forms. Second, a demonstrative-derived PH often combines with a semantically general noun such as nešto ‘thing,’ as in tova nešto.

Table 2.Proximal demonstratives in Bulgarian

	singular (sg)	plural (pl)
masculine (mas)	tozi	tezi
feminine (fem)	tazi
neuter (neu)	tova

Bulgarian PHs are exemplified in (32)–(33). In (32), Maria, who cannot access the target word, relies on the PH tova nešto to substitute for the target word ‘detergent.’

(32)

[Maria wants to use a washing machine and needs some detergent. She asks Denis about its whereabouts, but cannot remember the word for ‘detergent.’]

Maria:

Denis,

D

kǎde

where

e

cop

tova

ph

nešto?

thing

‘Denis, where is the what-d’you-call-it (= detergent)?’

Denis:

Složih

put.1sg

go

it

obratno

back

v

in

škafa

cabinet

pod

under

mivkata.

sink

‘I put it back in the cupboard under the sink.’ [Bulgarian]

In (33), Denis is motivated to use the PH tova nešto for interpersonal reasons, withholding the target word baklava in the hope that the guests will be pleasantly surprised.

(33)

[Denis organised a dinner party for Bulgarian professors at a university in Japan. Bulgarian people like baklava, sweet pastries, but they are not generally sold in Japan. So he secretly bought some at a Bulgarian restaurant in Tokyo. After people finish eating the main dishes, he is about to serve baklava.]

E,

well

vreme

time

e

cop

da

to

servirame

serve.1pl

tova

ph

nešto .

thing

‘Well, it is time to serve thingies (= baklava).’ [Bulgarian]

Next, consider Example (34), which features an arbitrary-referential use. The PH tozi combines with the masculine noun profesor ‘professor’ and refers to an arbitrary professor.1212.There is a feminine form profesor-ka, but it tends to be avoided in contemporary Bulgarian. One usually chooses the masculine form profesor even to refer to a female professor.

(34)

[Denis teaches at a university. He talks with his colleague about what their students often say about classes.]

Trudnostta

difficulty

na

of

predmeta

subject.def

zavisi

depend.3sg

ot

from

prepodavatelja,

teacher

nali?

right

Često

often

studentite

student.pl

kazvat:

say.3pl

“Na

of

tozi

ph

profesor

professor

predmetǎt

subject.def

e

cop

lesen,

easy

no

but

na

of

tozi

ph

profesor

professor

predmetǎt

subject.def

e

cop

truden.”

difficult

‘The class level is different depending on teachers, isn’t it? I often hear students saying “The class taught by Professor So-and-so is easy, but the class taught by Professor So-and-so is difficult”.’ [Bulgarian]

In addition to the demonstrative-derived PHs, Bulgarian has the predicative PH takovam, which combines takova ‘this kind of’ and the verbaliser -m. (Note that takovam is the citation form (1sg, prs).) This PH is typically used to avoid a sexual term, as illustrated in (35).

(35)

[Denis is talking with his friend. Denis saw the friend walking with his girlfriend in a city yesterday and asks him what he did with his girlfriend yesterday.]

Ami,

well

nie

1pl

se

recp

takovahme

ph

snošti.

last.night

‘Well, we did you-know-what (= had intercourse) last night.’ [Bulgarian]

According to my informant, though takovam is typically used to avoid a sexual term, it may also be used when a speaker cannot immediately retrieve the target word, as shown in (36).

(36)

[Denis receives a phone call from his friend when he is in the middle of turning a screw to fix a clock. The friend asks what he is doing, and he replies.]

Sega

now

takovam ,

ph

za

for

da

to

popravja

fix

časovnika.

clock

‘I am now X-ing (= turning a screw) to fix a clock.’ [Bulgarian]

Crucially, takovam can also be used for arbitrary-referential purposes. This is illustrated in (37).

(37)

[Denis teaches at a university in Japan, and he talks with his colleague about how busy professors are these days.]

V

in

Japonija

Japan

prepodavatelite

teacher.pl

sa

cop

mnogo

much

zaeti,

busy.pl

zaštoto

because

takovat

ph

v

in

kampusa,

campus

takovat

ph

na

at

konferencii,

conference.pl

takovat

ph

vkǎšti

at.home

i

and

taka

so

natatǎk

onwards

‘In Japan, professors are very busy because they do such-and-such on campus, do such-and-such at conferences, do such-and-such at home, and so on.’ [Bulgarian]

Denis, by using the PH takovam, refers to arbitrary actions to explain why professors in Japan are busy. Whilst each action is meant to be arbitrary, the type of action is partially specified due to the locative adjuncts. For example, the first instance of takovam, which co-occurs with v kampusa ‘on campus,’ refers to an arbitrary action that professors usually do on campus.

In sum, Bulgarian has not only demonstrative-derived nominal PHs (as in Romanian) but also the verbal PH takovam, and these forms may be used to achieve arbitrary reference.

4.4Summary

The objective of this section has been to lend cross-linguistic support to my contention that a speaker/writer may employ a PH to refer to an arbitrary entity. To this end, I have explored various examples in Korean, Romanian, and Bulgarian, whilst at the same time pointing out their cross-language discrepancies.

A caveat is in order here. I do not claim that all PHs can be used to refer to an arbitrary entity. Consider you-know-who and what-d’you-call-it. One cannot say you-know-who to refer to an arbitrary professor in the context of (31)/(34); for this purpose, one may use so-and-so, as in Professor So-and-so. Also, one cannot say do what-d’you-call-it to refer to an arbitrary action in the context of (37); an appropriate form here is do such-and-such. These restrictions seem to arise due to the encoded meaning of the clauses these expressions derive from. For instance, you-know-who derives from the clause you know who, and this literally signifies that the hearer knows who the speaker is talking about. This “known referent” presupposition rules out the arbitrary-referential possibility.1313.I owe this point to an insightful comment from one of the reviewers.

5.Conclusion

In this article, I have investigated the referential nature of PHs by analysing new data from four languages: Japanese, Korean, Romanian, and Bulgarian. PHs in these languages may be used to substitute for a target word or to refer to an arbitrary entity (e.g. person, object, action, event, proposition).

In closing, let me point out empirical and theoretical implications of the present enquiry. To begin with some empirical points, many previous studies on PHs have centred around English and Japanese (and to a lesser extent, Korean, Mandarin, and some other languages). The present study aims to fill that gap by analysing wh-derived PHs in Japanese and Korean, as well as Romanian and Bulgarian PHs. More importantly, the relationship between a PH form and the function of arbitrary reference has not been addressed in detail elsewhere. More work is needed to further establish this form–function relationship across a wide array of languages and to uncover cross-linguistic parallelisms and differences in this regard.

Theoretically, an essential task is to specify the encoded meaning of PHs and to explicate the ways in which it interacts with contextual information and pragmatic principles. Whilst some theoretically informed studies exist (Enfield 2003Enfield, Nick 2003 “The Definition of WHAT-d’you-call-it: Semantics and Pragmatics of Recognitional Deixis.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (1): 101–117. ; Jucker et al. 2003Jucker, Andreas, Sara Smith, and Tanja Lüdge 2003 “Interactive Aspects of Vagueness in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 35 (12): 1737–1369. ; Hengeveld and Keizer 2011Hengeveld, Kees, and Evelien Keizer 2011 “Non-Straightforward Communication.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (7): 1962–1976. ; Cheung 2015Cheung, Lawrence 2015 “Uttering the Unutterable with Wh-Placeholders.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 24 (3): 271–308. ; Seraku 2020Seraku, Tohru 2020 “Placeholders in Yoron Ryukyuan: A View from Functional Discourse Grammar.” Lingua 245: 1–18. ), none of them specifies the encoded meaning of PHs in explicit terms, let alone its interaction with contextual information and pragmatic principles. Here two theoretical implications may be drawn from the present study. First, the arbitrary-referential function is associated with the use of PHs in several different languages, regardless of their origins (i.e. wh word, demonstrative) and their categories (i.e. nominal, verbal). This, I argue, motivates a unitary account whereby the single encoded meaning of a PH results in the target-substituting function in some contexts and the arbitrary-referential function in others. Second, the claim that PHs may be exploited to hold a place for a concept (rather than a word or phrase) suggests that any legitimate treatment of PHs must allow that they may be metalinguistic (i.e. stand for a word or phrase) in some instances, but not always. This point challenges an essentially metalinguistic account of PHs (see Cheung 2015Cheung, Lawrence 2015 “Uttering the Unutterable with Wh-Placeholders.” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 24 (3): 271–308. ).

I hope that the findings reported in this article will stimulate cross-linguistic descriptions of PHs (especially, the relationship between PH forms and their functions) and place fruitful constraints on the legitimate range of theoretical accounts.