Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, we will examine the functional and formal motivations that gave rise to the particle-initiated construction and show that different discourse contexts justify and call for different forms of linguistic expressions, including those deviating from the well-formed ‘sentence’.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation examines a marginal syntactic construction that is observed in Japanese conversation in order to shed light on discussion of the role of ‘sentence’ within discourse. This construction, *wa*-initiated responsive construction (WRC), starts with a dependent particle, the topic postposition *wa* as illustrated below.

A: yamada-san imasu{is.in}?

‘Is Yamada in?’

B: wa= kyoo{today} yasumi{absent} desu{COPULA} ne{FINAL.PARTICLE}

‘(He) is absent today.’

Its distribution is very limited: the construction is observed only in spoken conversation, particularly in the response part of question-answer pairs. WRC, nevertheless, constitutes a robust construction in that its form and function are consistent across uses. The utterance-initial particle is pronounced with a high pitch and is often lengthened. Pragmatically, this construction also tends to be perceived as more positive, cooperative, and less abrupt, compared to an utterance without the utterance-initial *wa* (as in the case where both a noun phrase and *wa* are omitted). WRC in fact could be considered as a form of ellipsis where just a main noun phrase is omitted leaving a postposition behind. However, this raises a further question. Japanese in fact has a more common ellipsis strategy where *wa* is omitted with the noun phrase. What then motivated the development of this minor elliptical strategy?

Combination of the construction’s limited distribution and its functional and formal consistency presents an interesting puzzle. On the one hand, the construction contradicts with an otherwise widely observed structural rule, i.e., the postpositional particle *wa* must be used with a noun phrase. This contradiction is clearly felt by native speakers: speakers invariantly reject the form when presented in isolation. On the other hand, however, the construction has been used consistently and frequently enough to be established as a recognizable construction. In other words, there is some environment within conversation where the apparently ‘incomplete’ form of utterance is well-motivated.

In this presentation, we will examine the functional and formal motivations that gave rise to the particle-initiated construction and show that different discourse contexts justify and call for different forms of linguistic expressions, including those deviating from the well-formed ‘sentence’.