This book describes and analyzes the passive voice system in Japanese within the framework of generative grammar. By unifying different types of passives conventionally distinguished within the literature, the book advances a simple minimalist account where various passive chara…
This book introduces the way languages are used in Japanese-English interlingual families in Japan and explains what factors influence their language choice, with the aim of arriving at a predictive model of language use. It also proposes a taxonomy of interlingual family types …
The Languages of Japan and Korea provides detailed descriptions of the major varieties of languages in the region, both modern and pre-modern, within a common format, producing a long-needed introductory reference source. Korean, Japanese, Ainu, and representative members of the…
Have you ever wondered about a Japanese sentence your textbook fails to explain? Do you feel unsure about the use of "wa," "ga," and "mo?" Or what the rules and meanings of words in their literary forms are? If so, you will find your answers in A Reference Grammar of Japanese, t…
This book investigates the notion of subjectivity from a pragmatic point of view. There have been attempts to reduce the notion of the speaker or subjectivity as a syntactic category, or to seek an explanation for it in semantic terms. However, in order to understand the vast ra…
Translation and Literature in East Asia: Between Visibility and Invisibility explores the issues involved in translation between Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as well as from these languages into European languages, with an eye to comparing the cultures of translation within Eas…
"Although Japanese language is one of the most quoted examples in politeness research, extant publications focus on particular areas of politeness, and very few of them enquire into varied aspects of Japanese politeness. In this book, Yasuko Obana provides an integrated account …
"NihonGO NOW! is a beginning-level courseware package that takes a performed-culture approach to learning Japanese. This innovative approach balances the need for an intellectual understanding of structural elements with multiple opportunities to experience the language within i…
The Japanese sentence-final particles, ne, yo and yone have proved notoriously difficult to explain and are especially challenging for second language users. This book investigates the role of the particles in talk-in-interaction with the aim of providing a comprehensive underst…
It is a major challenge for linguists to explore the relations between referential choice and the discourse structure in dialogues, because, unlike written modes of discourse, dialogue as an interactional mode of discourse needs careful treatment for linguistic analysis. This bo…