16.2263, Review: Discourse/East Asian Lang: Onodera (2004)

Wed Jul 27 07:58:19 UTC 2005

LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2263. Wed Jul 27 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2263, Review: Discourse/East Asian Lang: Onodera (2004)

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1)
Date: 26-Jul-2005
From: Sufumi So < sso2 at gmu.edu >
Subject: Japanese Discourse Markers 

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 03:56:48
From: Sufumi So < sso2 at gmu.edu >
Subject: Japanese Discourse Markers 

AUTHOR: Onodera, Noriko O.
TITLE: Japanese Discourse Markers
SUBTITLE: Synchronic and Diachronic Discourse Analysis
SERIES: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 132
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-119.html 

Sufumi So, George Mason University

This monograph reports an empirical study on linguistic phenomena known as 
discourse markers or expressions that serve discourse-pragmatic functions. 
It is organized systematically with chapter 1 introducing the issues 
examined in the study, the conceptual framework, the data and the analytic 
approach, chapter 2 reviewing the relevant literature, chapters 3 through 
6 presenting findings of the analyses, and chapter 7 presenting a summary 
and conclusion of the study. Each chapter is accompanied by 4 to 19 notes 
given at the end of the book and 11 pages of references and a list of 
linguistic data used for the study are also provided. Two indices, one by 
people's names and the other by subjects, are also available.

The author studied the functions and historical changes of the Japanese 
conjunctions 'demo' and 'dakedo' (equivalent to 'but' in English) and the 
interjection 'ne' and its variants (similar to such expressions as 'you 
know' in English), which are now used as discourse markers. The main 
question of the study is how structures and functions of these linguistic 
items have changed, from the clause-final connectives to the sentence-
initial discourse markers in the case of the former and from the sentence-
final particles to the sentence-initial discourse markers in the case of 
the latter. Conceptually the study, which falls into the new linguistic 
subfield of historical pragmatics, is informed by four diverse areas of 
linguistics, that is, discourse studies and pragmatics, historical 
linguistics, typological studies, and syntax and semantics of conjunctions 
and interjections.

The author set out on this study with several goals: (a) to describe the 
functions and structures of the linguistic forms in question as used at 
each time stage in Japan through synchronic analysis, (b) to reveal the 
processes of their functional and structural changes in history through 
diachronic analysis, (c) to explain why or how such changes might have 
occurred, (d) to explain those changes within the framework of 
grammaticalization, (e) to explain the same changes from different angles 
drawing on such notions as linguistic typology, productivity, and 
conventionalization of conversational implicatures, and (f) to show the 
usefulness of Schiffrin's (1987) ideas of the evolutionary development of 
discourse markers in explaining such linguistic phenomena in Japanese. 
Accordingly, the book has a descriptive and an explanatory part, the 
former of which should be appealing to users of Japanese including native 
speakers and nonnative learners of Japanese and the latter of which must 
be of value for students and scholars of linguistics interested in 
historical development of pragmatic features or universality of linguistic 
phenomena. As a Japanese language teacher, I have found the information 
about the linguistic features in question and the author's arguments 
fascinating and I am planning on integrating such information into my 
language teaching.

The author has achieved all of the above goals with the meticulous and 
thorough work and the clear writing. In the process of describing and 
explaining the linguistic phenomena in question, a number of original 
propositions are put forth. In my view the following are particularly 
important among others:

(1) The so-called adversative conjunctions 'demo' and 'dakedo' in present-
day Japanese do fulfill discourse/pragmatic functions such as point-making 
devices in question/answer sequences, claiming the floor, opening the 
conversation, and changing the topic and sub-topic. The last two are 
unique to Japanese data.

(2) The main reason for the abovementioned pragmaticalization of 'demo' 
and 'dakedo' is the presence of the element 'd' of the respective initial 
morphemes 'de' and 'da'; it is the result of combined effect of 
grammatical and discourse processes. The grammatical process took place 
because of the element 'd' that enabled 'demo' and 'dakedo' to become 
initial textual markers. Because of their use in the utterance-initial 
position, they came to serve the expressive function as discourse markers.

(3) Interjections such as 'ne' and 'na' as used in modern Japanese which 
carry no semantic meaning within themselves, are all discourse markers of 
involvement in that they are used by the conversation participant to 
involve him/herself in what is being said in the conversation.

(4) The reason for the evolution of the above interjections into discourse 
markers is that 'ne' and 'na' served the highly communicative expressive 
function even as sentence-final particles. Thus, the pragmaticalization of 
these sentence-final particles as utterance-initial discourse markers was 
only natural.

The above four points lead to the author's summative proposition that the 
historical process of 'demo' and 'dakedo' as discourse markers entails 
grammaticalization and pragmaticalization while pragmaticalization (but 
not necessarily grammaticalization) constitutes the process of evolution 
of 'ne' and 'na' into discourse markers. Intricate relations between 
grammaticalization and pragmaticalization are expressed well in the 
following statement of the author: "Language changes. Grammaticalization 
is one of such changes. And the motivation of grammaticalization seems to 
lie in the human communicative strategies. Many discourse functions of 
language were found through the observation of language in use. Likewise, 
grammaticalization is also seen in changes in use" (p. 218).

In sum, this volume makes an important contribution to not only advancing 
our understanding of such common expressions as 'demo' and 'ne' used in 
daily conversations but also shedding new light on the general process of 
pragmaticalization by bringing in Japanese data. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sufumi So is Term Assistant Professor of Japanese at George Mason 
University (Fairfax, VA), where she directs the Japanese Language Program. 
Her research interests include Japanese language pedagogy and acquisition 
of second language writing. Her scholarly contributions in these areas 
have appeared in edited books and journals such as Journal of Second 
Language Writing, RELC Journal, and ADFL Bulletin.

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