In many East Asian languages, despite the prevalent occurrence of implicit reference, reference management is largely achieved without recourse to familiar agreement features. For this reason, recovering ellipted reference has been a perplexing problem in the analysis of these languages. This book elucidates the linguistic mechanisms for ellipsis resolution in Japanese, mechanisms which involve complex processes of inference that integrate grammatical, sociolinguistic, and discourse considerations with real world knowledge. These processes are realised in an integrated algorithm, the validity of which is tested against naturally-occurring written texts. This book also builds connections between theoretical linguistics and practical applications. The findings not only have theoretical implications for identifying crucial factors in the linguistic encoding of implicitly expressed information, factors which are very different from those found in European languages, but also offer practical applications, particularly for the design of machine translation systems and for learners of Japanese.

Table of contents

Preface ix Note on the examples xii Abbreviations xiii List of figures xiv List of tables xv Part 1. Japanese and argument ellipsis 1. Introduction 3–39 2. Various approaches to anaphora 41–95 Part 2. Linguistic devices 3. Predicate devices: Argument-inferring morphemes 99–173 4. Sentence devices I: The principle of direct alignment 175–228 5. Sentence devices II: The principles of argument ellipsis 229–265 6. Discourse devices: Ellipsis as the unmarked representation of sameness 267–290 Part 3. The process of referent identification 7. Algorithm 293–353 Epilogue 355–356 Appendices 357–365 Notes 366–383 References 385–394 Index 395–397