On How to Use -Wa

Abstract

The distribution of the particle -wa in Japanese sentences depends to a very significant extent on which speech act those sentences are used to perform. In an Austinian theory of assertive speech acts, four types of assertive speech act are distinguished. It is argued here that the dimensions along which the structures of these speech acts vary are the dimensions that serve to explain the presence of -wa. Furthermore, the various uses of -wa that have been identified in the literature, including the thematic and contrastive uses, are brought under a unified system. There are, however, two more general themes that are addressed here. First, it is claimed that, once a principled theory of speech acts is in play, the relative contributions of syntax and semantics to the study of natural language become more easy to distinguish. This provides an antidote to the tendency to syntacticize problems that are properly pragmatic (or pragmaticize problems that are properly syntactic, etc.). The attempt is made to separate these domains without favor. The other theme involves Austin's account of predication in terms of matching types of items and senses of predicates. That proposal, which stands in contrast to common assumptions in the semantics literature, and which is central to his account of assertive speech acts, deserves attention.