UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 12 (2000)
Functions of Japanese ga-clefts in discourse: A relevance-theoretic approach
MASAHIRO KATO
This article deals with the functional properties of Japanese ga-clefts
in news reports. The main points argued here are (i) that Amano’s (1995a, b)
test framework which is designed to distinguish two options for ga-clefts
is not in fact sufficient to do so; (ii) that in the framework of Relevance
Theory, an alternative analysis can be proposed which claims that ga-clefts
can be adequately accounted for without appealing to the semantic/pragmatic
notions such as presupposition and focus, information structure, “direction of
spesificity” and so on; and (iii) that Japanese ga-clefts can be
classified into three subcategories.
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