Personal pronouns and argument structure in Japanese: Discourse frequency, diachrony and typology

This dissertation argues for a reinterpretation of the linguistic evolution of personal pronouns in the history of Japanese. Reexamining the prevailing view that Japanese has no personal pronouns (e.g. Kuroda 1965; Noguchi 1995; 1997; Kanaya 2002), I will demonstrate that personal pronouns are an integral part of Japanese grammar. Prior research has found certain syntactic and semantic differences between pronouns in Japanese and in Western languages (e.g. with respect to relativization), but has never analyzed Japanese pronouns from the perspective of argument structure in discourse. If we take a discourse-based approach, a different picture of Japanese personal pronouns emerges.;Frequency analysis is crucial to the goals of this dissertation. Recently, we have witnessed a growing body of research by functionally oriented linguists (e.g. Bybee and Hopper 2001; Barlow and Kemmer 2001; Du Bois et al. 2003) and psycholinguistics (e.g. Elman et al. 1996) who regard grammar as a dynamic system that emerges from language use. In this usage-based and frequency-based approach to grammar, grammar is seen not as autonomous (one of the central tenets of generative linguistics), but as a dynamic system that emerges from recurrent patterns of use in naturally occurring discourse.;Syntactic and semantic analysis of the discourse behaviors of Japanese personal pronouns, including their distribution with respect to argument structure, shed new light on their status with respect to cross-linguistic paradigm of personal pronouns. Diachronically, Japanese has established the grammatical category of personal pronoun in the historical order of 1st > 2nd > 3rd person, based on data from argument structure in discourse. Analyzing the frequency of the six most common Japanese personal pronouns over time (ware 'I/you', watashi 'I', omae 'you', anata 'you', kare 'he', kanojo 'she'), I will emphasize the significance and usefulness of discourse-based approach that takes argument structure into consideration.