Japanese and French specificational sentences with left-dislocation and the questions they induce
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Makoto Kaneko
Abstract
This study examines the nature of questions induced in Japanese and French specificational sentences with left-dislocation. Despite their superficial similarities, the two constructions show the following differences. In Japanese, such constructions are almost exclusively found in monologic discourse, where the speaker speaks one-sidedly; a clear pause is required after the dislocated item, whose head is a lexical noun. In contrast, the French construction is mostly found in dialogues, and no pause is necessary after the dislocated sequence, whose head is typically occupied by a pronominal element. Building on these differences, this paper argues that: (i) In Japanese, the left-dislocated sequence introduces a topic, and the pause serves not only to signal a discourse boundary, as previously claimed, but also to provide the interlocutor with time to detect the contextual relevance of the introduced topic and to implicitly ask a question about it. Such a question may be explicitly articulated as an anticipated question. (ii) In French, while the left-dislocated sequence with a pronominal head should pick up a question shared among the discourse participants, it may introduce a topic when the head is a lexical noun. In these cases, the speaker may explicitly insert an anticipated question before the pronominal pickup.
Funding source: Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences
Award Identifier / Grant number: 22K00558
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their inspiring ideas and valuable comments on the previous versions of this article, which allowed me to fundamentally modify the content and the structure of the article. I am also thankful to the coordinators, Agnès Celle and Amália Mendes, for their continuous support and patience throughout the process. An earlier version of this article was presented at the workshop “Questions in monologic discourse” held as part of the 56th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens from 29 August to 1 September 2023. I am grateful for the insightful comments received from the participants. Any remaining errors or shortcomings are my sole responsibility.
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Research funding: This research is partially supported by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences (No. 22K00558).
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