The Japanese Copula : Forms and Functions

In this innovative study, Tomiko Narahara offers a multi-disciplinary description of the Japanese copula, revealing it to be at the interface of morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Most striking is her discovery of the copula's function to express the speaker's knowledge or ignorance about the proposition of the sentence. She provides a new morphological feature analysis to derive this modal function and further proposes a series of unified accounts for a wide range of discourse phenomena. In this innovative study, Professor Narahara offers a multi-disciplinary description of the Japanese copula, revealing it to be at the interface of morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Most striking is her discovery of the copula's function to express the speaker's knowledge or ignorance about the proposition of the sentence. She provides a new morphological feature analysis to derive this modal function and further proposes a series of unified accounts for a wide range of discourse phenomena. " ... A wonderful and innovative study."--Professor Ken-ichi Takami, Tokyo Metropolitan University 'I would strongly recommend [this book] to anyone who is interested in knowing more about this small grammatical creature in Japanese.' - Seiki Ayano, Journal of Linguistics Tomiko Narahara. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 206-213) And Index.