Papers by Reijirou Shibasaki
Journal of Japanese Linguistics
Formulaic expressions pervade everyday language. While this has caught the attention of pedagogic... more Formulaic expressions pervade everyday language. While this has caught the attention of pedagogically oriented researchers due to its benefit in foreign language instruction, the centrality of formulaic expressions in actual language use, along with their emerging nature and plasticity, has only been marginally recognized and thus remains largely unexplored, especially in languages other than English. We propose to fill this gap by highlighting the cognitive and interactional basis of formulaicity in Japanese. We place full weight on formulaic language in actual use, which includes conversational discourse and social networking services such as Twitter posts. Each contribution highlights how formulaic expressions are based on and shaped by usage in context and how they are deployed in unfolding discourse.
Journal of Japanese Linguistics
East Asian Pragmatics, 2021
With the interest in different manifestations of linguistic features on the one hand and the inte... more With the interest in different manifestations of linguistic features on the one hand and the interest in commonalities of discursive needs in interaction on the other, there is a broadening of pragmatics to the study of multiple languages (Aijmer,
Studies on Reduplication, Dec 31, 2005
East Asian Pragmatics, 2021
This study examines the discourse-pragmatic functions of the discourse marker (DM, hereafter) jij... more This study examines the discourse-pragmatic functions of the discourse marker (DM, hereafter) jijitsujoo ‘as a matter of practice, practically speaking’ in comparison with another DM jijitsu ‘in fact, the fact is’ in the history of Japanese. The gist of the survey results is that, while jijitsu serves to introduce telling evidence for the preceding statement, jijitsujoo reformulates the preceding statement with what the speaker regards to be relevant, while disregarding irrelevant information. In other words, jijitsujoo plays a more subjective role as a DM than jijitsu in that the former can provide the speaker’s own stance toward an immediate topic. These DM functions can be fully fulfilled in sentence-initial position, presumably because they are connective in essence.
Studies in Language Companion Series, 2018
Studies in Language Companion Series, 2018
The expression chances are follows the historical process: the chances are that \u3e (the) chance... more The expression chances are follows the historical process: the chances are that \u3e (the) chances are (that) \u3e chances are over time. Such formal changes with no fundamental change in meaning can be viewed as a case of constructional change in the light of Traugott and Trousdale (2013)
The paper reviews the distribution of syndetic and asyndetic reduplicative patterns in the langua... more The paper reviews the distribution of syndetic and asyndetic reduplicative patterns in the languages of Europe. It is argued that there is an areal logic behind the distribution as languages in the south and west behave differently from the languages in the north and east of the continent. Syndetic and asyndetic reduplicative patterns are shown to be largely functionally equivalent although syndesis is far less grammaticalised than asyndesis. The data are drawn from two large parallel literary corpora. The evaluation procedure is based on statistics.
This study takes a diachronic approach to verbal reduplications in Japanese, and illustrates that... more This study takes a diachronic approach to verbal reduplications in Japanese, and illustrates that the functions of Japanese verbal reduplications can be analyzed in terms of clause integration. Japanese verbal reduplications have reduced the structural scope from both independent and dependent clauses to dependent clauses over history. Along this cline of clause integration, verbal reduplications have undergone semantic changes from original lexical meanings to adverbial to aspectual. This study also presents the proportional frequency of verbal reduplications over history in comparison of reduplications of other types. The arguments are induced from more than 1200 reduplications of fives types: verb, adjective, noun, adverb, and ideophone. These data cover all stages of Japanese from the 8 through the 20 centuries. Texts are selected that best reflect colloquial usage of those days. The history of Japanese is provisionally divided as follows: 1) Early Old Japanese (8-Early 9C); 2) ...
Studies at the Grammar-Discourse Interface, 2021
Grammar – Discourse – Context, 2019
ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, 2014
Nishi and two anonymous EL reviewers for their invaluable comments and constructive criticism and... more Nishi and two anonymous EL reviewers for their invaluable comments and constructive criticism and to Karin Aijmer, Joan C. Beal and Wolfgang Imo for their providing relevant information to me. Any remaining faults are all my own.
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2002
Building on speculations from preceding studies, this study aims to determine whether Preferred A... more Building on speculations from preceding studies, this study aims to determine whether Preferred Argument Structure (PAS, Du Bois 1987) holds for early stages of English. As Ashby & Bentivoglio (to appear) concede in their concluding remarks, a simple comparison of PAS, in Old French and Modem French for example, is not sufficient for uncovering and understanding the nature of PAS. Therefore, this study aims to show the gradual transition of PAS in the history of English.
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 2012
This study is aimed to probe into one type of pronominal word formation such as me-ward, us-ward,... more This study is aimed to probe into one type of pronominal word formation such as me-ward, us-ward, you-ward, thee-ward, him-ward, her-ward and them-ward , including all of their variant forms. Although having been used for a prolonged period of time from the early 13th century, they have gone unnoticed in English historical linguistics. The ward(s) construction started with locative adverbs as the head of the construction, expanding the range of the headwords to prepositions, proper and identifiable nouns, pronouns, and nonce words. While all the constructional examples except the pronoun- ward(s) construction are relatively productive and stable albeit being jocular and ad hoc at times, the pronoun- ward(s) construction with any grammatical person has been fairly infrequent throughout history. As a consequence, the infrequent occurrence of the pronoun- ward(s) construction impeded the global constructional expansion, failing in establishing the solid constructional stability and falling into disuse in the 20th century.
Studies in Language Companion Series, 2014
The grammatical category of personal pronouns is one of the most researched domains in Japanese a... more The grammatical category of personal pronouns is one of the most researched domains in Japanese as well as in other languages. In fact, works on the genesis and development of Japanese personal pronouns in comparison to those in other languages have been continuously reported long before the notion of grammaticalization was introduced and became an important concept in studies of language change. While preceding studies mostly lay emphasis on the different behaviors between Japanese personal pronouns and the counterparts in European languages, Heine and Song (2010, 2011) exemplify some features common among particular sets of languages i.e. referential shifting between different pronouns, especially from third to second person. As a supplemental survey to Heine and Song (2010, 2011), the present study aims to point out other pathways, especially from first to second person, through which personal pronouns are grammaticalized more in Japanese than in other languages.
Studies in the History of the English Language VI, 2015
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Papers by Reijirou Shibasaki