Usage-based Approaches to Japanese Grammar: Towards the understanding of human language(156 Studies in Language Companion Series)

This volume brings together papers that take usage-based approaches to study the nature of human language, with a focus on the grammar of Japanese. The 12 chapters provide a rich array of data and methodologies, with topics ranging from phonology, modality, and grammatical morphemes, to sentential construction and discourse-level phenomena such as turn-taking, speech register, and language change. As a whole, they demonstrate that usage-based linguistics illuminates various phenomena in the language that could not have been well accounted for by resorting solely to a formal theory such as the Universal-Grammar-based approach. Reflecting theoretical, methodological, and technological advancements made in and outside the field of cognitive-functional linguistics in recent years, the papers contained in this volume, both individually and collectively, have significant implications towards linguistics in general and Japanese linguistics in particular, as we as Japanese language teaching.

Table of Contents:
1. Acknowledgement; 2. List of contributors; 3. Introduction: Situating usage-based (Japanese) linguistics (by Ono, Tsuyoshi); 4. Part 1. Cognition and language use; 5. Subordination and information status: A case of To and Koto complement clauses in Japanese (by McGloin, Naomi H.); 6. On state of mind and grammatical forms from functional perspectives: The case for Garu and Te-iru (by Johnson, Yuki); 7. Grammar of the internal expressive sentences in Japanese: Observations and explorations (by Iwasaki, Shoichi); 8. Subjectivity, intersubjectivity and Japanese grammar: A functional approach (by Shinzato, Rumiko); 9. What typology reveals about modality in Japanese: A cross-linguistic perspective* (by Horie, Kaoru); 10. Part 2. Frequency, interaction and language use; 11. If rendaku isn't a rule, what in the world is it? (by Vance, Timothy J.); 12. The semantic basis of grammatical development: Its implications for modularity, innateness, and the theory of grammar (by Shirai, Yasuhiro); 13. Interchangeability of so-called interchangeable particles: Corpus analysis of spatial markers, Ni and E (by Kabata, Kaori); 14. The re-examination of so-called 'clefts': A study of multiunit turns in Japanese talk-in-interaction (by Mori, Junko); 15. Activity, participation, and joint turn construction: A conversation analytic exploration of 'grammar-in-action' (by Hayashi, Makoto); 16. Part 3. Language change and variation; 17. Context in constructions: Variation in Japanese non-subject honorifics (by Matsumoto, Yoshiko); 18. The use and interpretation of "regional" and "standard" variants in Japanese conversation (by Okamoto, Shigeko); 19. Index

Review :
I found the book to be insightful and thought-provoking, and brings the study of language away from the abstract discussion of grammar and back to an understanding of its role in terms of human communication. For this reason, I would recommend the book to both prospective and current teachers of Japanese language as well as teacher-researchers from a variety of related domains. "Why is it that you are interested in my talk on Japanese?" "Well, I'm a specialist on extraterrestrial communication!" --- This was actually a piece of conversation between me and a member of the audience after the presentation of my paper on Japanese at the Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies in Dresden, 1999. I am not sure if my conversational partner found his curiosity fully satisfied with my talk, but I can assure you (especially if you are interested in typological considerations) that Japanese is a really fascinating language in order to have a balanced view of what a human language can be like. You don't have to go for little known "alien" and "exotic" languages (where you often find the descriptions available not up to your expectations --- understandably because of the extreme difficulty on the part of the researcher to fully and sufficiently familiarize him-/herself with what is going on in the minds of the native speakers). In the present volume, you find a group of professionally well-trained linguists (mostly, native speakers of Japanese) being engaged with a number of crucial (and perhaps some even apparently peculiar) features of the Japanese language. Their discussions and presentations are mildly in the framework of cognitive linguistics and thus fully accessible and serviceable for anyone interested in seeing how human languages can look like. This volume makes an ideal supplementary reading for courses on the structure of Japanese and is of interest to those broadly concerned with Japanese culture and society, as well as those specialized in cross-cultural communication.