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Discourse within a sentence: An exploration of postpositions in Japanese as an interactional resource

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2004

MAKOTO HAYASHI
MAKOTO HAYASHI
Affiliation:
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Foreign Languages Building, 2090-A, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, mhayashi@uiuc.edu
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Abstract

This study explores a phenomenon in Japanese conversation that might be regarded as “discourse-within-a-sentence,” or interpolating a sequence of talk during ongoing sentence construction. It explicates the way in which Japanese speakers use postpositional particles as a resource to incorporate an element in a parenthetical sequence into the syntax of a sentence-in-progress. It is shown that the usability of postpositions for achieving discourse-within-a-sentence comes from the situated workings of postpositions used in a wider range of interactional contexts. Through a detailed examination of relevant instances from transcribed Japanese conversations, this study addresses such issues as (i) “sentences” in interaction as both a resource for, and an outcome of, intricate interactional work; (ii) postpositions as resources for retroactive transformations of turn-shapes in Japanese; and (iii) the relationship between typological features of the grammar of a language and forms of interactional practices.I wish to thank the following people for valuable comments at various stages in the development of this article: William Bright, Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox, Noriko Fujii, Charles Goodwin, Jane Hill, Junko Mori, Tsuyoshi Ono, Jerome Packard, Hiroko Tanaka, and Sandra Thompson. Remaining shortcomings are my responsibility.

Keywords

Grammar and interactionconversation analysispostpositionstypologyJapanese
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 2004 , pp. 343 - 376
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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