Let us turn to Sakuma (1941). What is significant about Sakuma’s research is his original distinction of two sentence types and its relevance to the topic/subject issue.
Sakuma, attaching importance to explicating the structural composition of sentences, proposed to allow for two important types of declarative sentence. These sentence types are referred to as shinasadame-bun (‘evaluative sentence’) and monogatari-bun(‘event sentence’). He characterizesshinasadame-bunas“the sentence whose function is to describe a property/state of a given entity or to express judg- ment”, andmonogatari-bunas“the sentence whose function is to describe an event that takes place”(Sakuma 1941:153).
Sakuma points out that the sentence types in question are not just conceptual but that they manifest themselves differently in their structural compositions. That is, the evaluative sentence takes the form(nani-nani) wa (koo-koo/nanika) da‘(such and such) is (such and such)’, where the beginning portion appears as the topic of the sentence (Sakuma 1941:155). The event sentence, on the other hand, takes the form (nani-nani) ga (dooka) suru/sita ‘(such and such) do/did (such and such)’, where in addition to the requirement that a verb should appear as the predicate,
“the specification of the temporal and spatial setting”is indispensable since “the description of an event would not be complete, if the temporal/spatial setting is not explicit”(Sakuma 1941:154). Thus, Sakuma draws attention to the fact that the dis- tinction between the evaluative sentence and the event sentence is reflected in their structural compositions. Particularly important is his observation that topicalization and temporal/spatial specification are involved in the evaluative sentence and the event sentence, respectively. In referring to the evaluative/event sentence distinc- tion, which plays a crucial role in this chapter, I will henceforth make use of the terms“property predication sentence”and“event predication sentence”.
To sum up, the points of Matsushita’s (1928) and Sakuma’s (1941) research are the following: (i) the notion of topic and that of subject are distinguished in Japanese, (ii) with respect to the topic/subject distinction, we can think of different language types: the Japanese type, which distinguishes topic and subject, and the English type, which does not make such a distinction, (iii) “the topic sentence”and “the topicless sentence”are differentiated in Japanese, (iv) the topic/topicless sentence dis- tinction is related to the known/unknown distinction, and (v) the evaluative sentence (property predication sentence) vs. event sentence (event predication sentence) dis- tinction has a bearing on whether a topic appears in a sentence or not.
predication”and“event predication”and their relevance to the topic/subject issue, (b) the language typology based on the topic/subject distinction, and (c) the relation between the topic/topicless sentence distinction and the known/unknown distinc- tion. I will discuss these points in this order.
Let us start with thefirst point, i.e. the two predication types and their relevance to the topic/subject issue. As studies that made a great contribution to this problem, Mikami (1953) and Kawabata (1976, 2004) should be mentioned, in addition to Sakuma (1941).
Mikami (1953), following Sakuma’s (1941) idea of the evaluative/event sentence distinction, characterizes the two sentence types in terms of the part of speech of the predicate concerned. He uses the termsmeishi-bun(‘noun sentence’) anddōshi- bun(‘verb sentence’) in place of Sakuma’s shinasadame-bun and monogatari-bun:
meishi-bunis a sentence whose predicate is a noun, and dōshi-bun is a sentence whose predicate is a verb.
According to Mikami, the noun sentence expresses“a quality of a given entity”, while the verb sentence expresses “the process of an event”. He states that how and to what extent the noun sentence and the verb sentence are distinguished can vary among languages, and that Japanese makes a clearer distinction than West European languages.
The clear distinction between the noun sentence and the verb sentence in Japanese is claimed to be substantiated more than anything else by how a topic appears in a sentence. Mikami, who like Sakuma attaches importance to the topic status in a sentence, argues that the noun sentence expresses a categorical judgment by means of its form“topic (the whole)–comment (its part/side is such and such)”, and that “the topic of the noun sentence is a self-centered and independent con- stituent, to which its part/side having a certain quality is attached”(Mikami 1953:139).
By this characterization, the structural composition of a sentence like (7) is ac- counted for.
(7) Ano hito wa ne ga syoosin-mono da.
that person TOP heart NOM timid-person COP
‘That person is a coward at heart’.
In contrast to the noun sentence, Mikami argues, the verb sentence typically is topicless. Stating that“the typical verb sentence to be called ‘the simple reportive sentence’is composed without a topic”(Mikami 1953:141), he points out that topic- less sentences like (8) are used in a chronological table of Japanese history.
(8) Kinmei Tennoo no zyuusan-nen, Kudara kara Bukkyoo Kinmei Emperor GEN 13th-year Kudara from Buddhism ga denraisita.
NOM was introduced
‘In the 13th year of Emperor Kinmei, Buddhism was introduced from Kudara.’
Mikami thus estimates, in agreement with Sakuma, that the noun/verb sentence distinction is clearly reflected in the structural composition of sentences. To be noted in particular is his view on the relation between the two sentence types and the topic/topicless sentence distinction.
Another notable study of sentence predication type is Kawabata (1976, 2004).
Kawabata’s theory was constructed independently of Sakuma and Mikami, but he stands on common ground with them in that great importance is attached to the notion of sentence type in conducting a grammatical analysis.
Based on the idea that a sentence corresponds to the structure of judgment, Kawabata recognizes two sentence types, called keiyōshi-bun(‘adjective sentence’) anddōshi-bun(‘verb sentence’). He adopts the termkeiyōshi-bunrather thanmeishi- bun, which is used by Mikami. Kawabata entertains the idea that the adjective sentence corresponds directly to the structure of judgment, and hence it is formed by the unification of “the subject term” and “the predicate term”, i.e. a two-part structure. For Kawabata, subject is a concept relevant primarily to the adjective sentence.
The verb sentence, on the other hand, is claimed to be the individuation of a state of affairs on the basis of time and space (primarily, time), with the voice/
aspect/tense categories represented distinctively in the predicate. He also asserts that the verb sentence has case categories (more specifically, the nominative case, the accusative case, and the dative case), corresponding to the subject in the adjec- tive sentence. In Kawabata’s view, the grammatical category of case is proper to the verb sentence.
Although Kawabata does not use the term“topic”in his characterization of the sentence types, we might be allowed to understand that“the subject of the adjective sentence” and “the nominative case of the verb sentence” in his terminology are equivalent to the topic and the subject in the terminology of this chapter.
A linguistic concept similar to the property/event predication distinction, that of
“individual-level predication vs. stage-level predication”, proposed by Carlson (1977) and Carlson and Pelletier (eds.) (1995), is worthy of mention (cf. Kageyama 2006, 2009). In their research on the semantics of reference, Carlson and others dis- tinguish between“the individual-level reference”and“the stage-level reference”in reference to entities. Take, for instance, the following sentences.
(9) John knows French.
(10) John is smoking.
The wayJohnfunctions in its reference differs in (9) and (10): in (9) the referent in question isJohn as an individual, while in (10) it isJohn as a manifestation of the individual in a specific time and space.
Corresponding to the difference in the reference of entities, the individual-level predication and the stage-level predication are distinguished as different types of predication. In (9) and (10),“knows French”and“is smoking”function as individual-
level predication and stage-level predication, respectively. Thus, the individual-level/
stage-level predication distinction has much in common with the property/event predication distinction. Nonetheless, their thesis has not delved into the topic/
subject issue so far, as it has not taken languages like Japanese into consideration.
Let us next turn to the second point, i.e. that of the language typology based on the topic/subject distinction. Mikami (1953, 1963, 1970) and Shibatani (1989, 2002), in addition to Matsushita (1928), have presented a notable view on this issue.
Mikami is known to be an advocator ofshugo-hitei-ron(‘the thesis of the denial of subject’). Mikami does not simply deny the existence of subject in Japanese. The point of his thesis is that the sentence structure is“bipartite” in a different sense between Japanese and English: Japanese has a“topic-comment”bipartite structure, while English has a“subject-predicate”bipartite structure.
It is noted that Mikami was conscious of the typological difference between Japanese and English regarding the basic composition of sentences. Stating that Japanese and English exhibit a typological difference in accentuation, i.e. “pitch accent language”vs.“stress accent language”, Mikami draws attention to the point that the constructional pattern of sentences is also remarkably different between the two languages. His claim is condensed into the expression“the skeleton of the Japanese sentence is‘T-P’(‘Topic-Predicate’) and that of the English sentence is‘S-P’ (‘Subject-Predicate’)”(Mikami 1963: preface). Mikami’s view is highly evaluated as an early instance of the current typological perspective.
Shibatani (1989, 2002) makes a conceptual distinction between“the topic”in the sense of “subject matter”and “the subject” as characterized by the semantic role of “agent”. On this basis, Shibatani maintains that English is a language in which the notions of “subject matter” and “agent” converge on the same grammatical form, i.e. grammatical subject, and that“the generalization of agent in the subject” (that is, noun phrases with various kinds of semantic roles including agent can appear in the subject position) is quite conspicuous. In contrast, he says, Japanese is regarded as a language in which the notions of topic and subject are separated, because the convergence of the notion of subject matter and that of agent is not observed.
Shibatani’s idea that English only necessitates the notion of subject, while Japanese necessitates the notion of topic as well as that of subject is basically in accord with Matsushita’s (1928) idea, mentioned in 2.1. What makes Shibatani’s view distinctive is his prototype theory approach to the notion of subject. Shibatani takes the position that the degree of subject prominence varies across languages: in English the notions of “subject matter”and “agent”converge on the grammatical subject and the generalization of agent is conspicuous, while this is not the case in Japanese. Thus, English is considered to have “the prototype subject”, while Japanese subject is non-prototypical.
In relation to the language typology in question, we need to touch on Li and Thompson (1976) as a related proposal in linguistics. Li and Thompson propose the distinction of “the topic-prominent language vs. the subject-prominent language”.
Their proposal is an attempt to classify languages according to whether sentences of a given language are framed on the basis of “topic-comment” or“subject-predicate”. Their typological classification resembles Mikami’s “TP/SP” typology. They claim, however, that the topic-prominence property and the subject-prominence property can coexist in a single language, and classify Japanese as a“both topic-prominent and subject-prominent language”. In this respect, their view is similar to Matsushita’s and Shibatani’s idea rather than Mikami’s idea.
Finally, let us take up the issue of (c), the relation between the topic/topicless sentence distinction and the known/unknown distinction. In addition to Matsushita (1928), I would like to refer to Matsumura (1942) and Kuno (1972, 1973).
Matsumura (1942) asserts that when we discuss the problem of whether waor gais to be used to mark the subject, it is necessary to differentiate betweensudeni kotei-shita gainen(‘previously-fixed notion’; he also uses the termkichi‘known’) and atarashii gainen (‘new notion’). He points out that in (11) wa is used to treat ie
‘house’as known, while in (12)gais used to express thatieis unknown.
(11) Tonari no ie wa mada moetei-nai na.
neighboring GEN house TOP yet burning-NEG SFP
‘The house next door has not burned yet.’ (12) A, ie ga moeteiru.
oh house NOM burning
‘Oh, the house is burning.’
Examining howwaandgaare used in dialogue, Matsumura came to the conclusion that the difference between“known to the hearer” and “unknown to the hearer” plays a key role in the usage ofwa/ga.He cites (13) as a typical example that indi- cates the relevance of the“known/unknown to the hearer”distinction to the usage of the two particles.
(13) Mukasi-mukasi aru tokoro ni oziisan to obaasan a long time ago a certain place in old man and old woman
ga arimasita. Oziisan wa yama e
NOM existed the old man TOP mountain to
sibakari ni, obaasan wa kawa e
gatheringfirewood for the old woman TOP river to sentaku ni ikimasita.
washing for went
‘A long time ago, there lived an old man and an old woman. The old man went to a mountain to gatherfirewood and the old woman went to a river to do the washing.’
Matsumura (1942) thus is worthy of attention because of his claim that the contrast between old and new information has much relevance to linguistic communication.
Incidentally, since Matsumura’s concern was with the problem of wa/ga marking in the subject, he did not go into the topic/subject issue; neither did he adopt Matsushita’s (1928) terminological distinction betweendaimokugo(‘topic word’) and shugo (‘subject’), although he referred to Matsushita’s description of the usage of wa/ga.
Another important study of the issue of (c) is Kuno (1972, 1973). Influenced by the “functional sentence perspective” of the Prague School, Kuno introduced the notion of“old/new information”to explain the usage ofwa/ga.
Kuno proposed two uses of waand ga, respectively. They are “thematic wa”,
“contrastive wa”, “descriptive ga”, and “exhaustive-listing ga”, as shown in (14) through (17).
(14) [thematicwa] John wa gakusei desu.
student is
‘Speaking of John, he is a student’. (15) [contrastivewa] Ame wa hutte imasu ga. . .
rain falling is but
‘It is raining, but. . .’ (16) [descriptivega] Ame ga hutte imasu.
rain falling is
‘It is raining.’
(17) [exhaustive-listingga] John ga gakusei desu.
student is
‘(Of all the people under discussion) John (and only John) is a student’. Kuno points out that thematicwa conveys old information, commenting that“the themes of Japanese sentences, as in English sentences, must be either generic or anaphoric” (Kuno 1973: 44). In contrast, descriptive ga and exhaustive-listing ga both convey new information:“what is common between thegafor neutral descrip- tion and thegafor exhaustive listing is that, in both cases, the subject conveys new information”(Kuno 1972: 272).
The notion of “old/new information”has been discussed extensively since the appearance of the theory of information structure. In the theory of information struc- ture, which emphasizes the communicative functions of linguistic expressions, the notions of “topic” and “focus” occupy an important position. In that theory, the topic and the focus are thought of as constituting the old/new information contrast (cf. Lambrecht 1994, Erteshik-Shir 2006, Heycock 2008).
3 Remarks
In this section, I will address some remarks on the following three issues, surveyed in section 2: (a) the property/event predication distinction and its relevance to the topic/subject issue, (b) the language typology based on the topic/subject distinction, and (c) the relation between the topic/topicless sentence distinction and the known/
unknown distinction. For expository purposes, I discuss (a) and (b) in 3.1, in the way that they are interrelated. Then I come to grips with (c) in 3.2.2