LSJapL 07: Cognitive semantics of the qualitative suffix in the Japanese spatial demonstratives ...

Cognitive semantics of the qualitative suffix in the Japanese spatial demonstratives koko, soko, and asoko: SPACE, THING, and TIME

Jun Nakamura
University of Auckland

This book is the first systematic study of Japanese spatial demonstratives from cognitive and pragmatic points of view. The morphology of Japanese demonstratives is composed of series of forms having the deictic roots the KO- ‘proximal’, SO- ‘medial’ and A- ‘distal’ plus various qualitative suffixes. This study focuses on the –ko suffix for the spatial category mainly in the exophoric (deictic) use.

Studies of Japanese demonstratives have a long history, in which the deictic root of demonstratives, KOSOA, has been scrutinized as a three-term system of demonstratives. However, qualitative parts of deictic expressions have not been paid much attention. This book carries out an in-depth semantic analysis of the –ko suffix separated from the deictic roots KOSOA, which results in defining meanings of the –ko suffix without the influence of the notion DISTANCE, and also analyzes the pragmatic relationships between the conceptual properties of the –ko suffix revealed in this study and the deictic contrasts of KOSOA.

Secondly, construal alternatives of demonstrative pronouns between the –ko suffix ‘place’ and the –re suffix ‘thing’ are examined in order to illustrate how different conceptualizations of the facets of the same referent are expressed by these alternative forms. Finally, based on the conceptual properties of the –ko suffix, it will investigate how spatial demonstratives can be employed as temporal expressions transferring from the SPACE domain to the TIME domain.

ISBN 978 3 86288 572 5. LINCOM Studies in Japanese Linguistics 07. 266pp. 2014.