Japanese (w)atashi/ore/boku I: Theyre not just pronouns

Abstract

Japanese first-person “pronouns” in conversation are found not to be good clausal arguments and not to be used just for reference. They do not form a unitary category, but rather exhibit three separate construction-specific uses, each with its own set of grammatical, semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic properties, thus supporting nonmodular representations which can capture the way such form‐function amalgams are used by Japanese speakers. These constructions are associated with different degrees of fixedness, supporting panchronic views of grammar, which propose that grammar is in a constant state of “structuration”. Our findings underscore the importance of examining the form‐function relationship in everyday conversation.

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