Deictic and anaphoric uses of the Japanese demonstratives ko-so-A

Abstract

This paper analyzes the ko-so-A demonstratives in Japanese as they occur in experimentally-obtained soliloquy data. In soliloquy, the Japanese deixis system consists of a two-way opposition, viz. ko-vs. a-. So-appears only as an anaphor; its antecedent can be either familiar or unfamiliar to the speaker, contrary to Kuno's (1973) analysis. It is also argued that ko-and a-are always deictic in soliloquy. Adopting Chafe's (1994) theory of consciousness, it is hypothesized that (i) a-is used when the referent is in the speaker's peripheral consciousness, and (ii) ko-is used to refer to an entity if it is already focused at the moment of speech. Finally, it is demonstrated that so-and a-exhibit the attributive-referential distinction, which is proposed by Donnellan (1966).