Connecting logic, interaction, and social context: The functions of the Japanese 'connectives' in natural discourse.

摘要

This dissertation explores the plurifunctional nature of the Japanese connectives. The Japanese connectives share a morphologically complex structure, ( (stem) - (conjunctive particle)), and in a paradigm, two stems, namely, the nonproximal deictic morpheme so- ('it/that') and the copulative auxiliary da- ('be'), organize the connectives as formally distinctive sets, which I call "so-connectives" and "da- connectives". In this study, assuming that grammatical structure and discourse organization are concurrently relevant to any occasion of language use, I approach the two sets, by appeal to both discourse and morphosyntactic based methods of analysis.; Firstly, by analyzing 15 hours of conversation data, I show that the so- and da-connectives are both formally and functionally definable sets. With respect to q in an utterance "Connective q", the so-connectives create a single link, identifying one antecedent unit, p, which is only textually presupposable. However, the da- connectives create multiple links, identifying multiple criterial p(s), which are co(n)textually presupposable. Moreover, unlike the so-connectives, the da-connectives superimpose a 'speaker-of' relation on the propositional sequence, and in so doing, they embody speaker's evaluative stance and participant alignment structure.; A morphosyntactic analysis followed up the discourse analysis further elucidates the morphological segmentability of the discourse functions of the two sets, identifying the semantic valence of the deictic so- and the copulative auxiliary da, which are retained by the stems so- and da- in the connective words. I illustrate (i) the one-place function of so- as an anaphor, whose use maximally presupposes the explicit prior mention of the referent, and (ii) the two-place function of da as an auxiliary which links two arguments with a topic-comment relation, expressing co(n)textually presupposable information as a null anaphor. The analysis also describes how these properties contribute to the denotational and indexical functions of the two sets of connectives, with considerations of concatenation effects of the stems and the conjunctive suffixes. This study, introducing an integrated approach to connectives, provides a good example that describes the interplay between grammar and context for constructing discourse and interaction.