| This study proposes a unified account of the Japanese nouns koto ‘situation, intangible thing’ and no, an indefinite pronoun. When koto and no occur as arguments of a predicate with or without a complement clause, as predicate nominals, and in noun phrase utterances, they have traditionally been categorized as complementizers, auxiliary verbs, and sentence final particles.;This dissertation demonstrates that koto and no are syntactically always a noun and an indefinite pronoun respectively. The diverse uses of koto and no are accounted for by whether or not the speaker believes the addressee believes the speaker believes that a proposition or an open proposition referred to by koto or no is already salient in the addressee's mind. No is used when the speaker believes the addressee believes the speaker believes that the proposition or an open proposition is already salient in the addressee's mind. Koto is used when the speaker does not believe this. It is shown that the distribution and interpretation of koto and no are also affected by other factors such as the speaker's goals and intentions including how he wants to represent himself, the speaker's belief about the addressee's beliefs, the relationship between the speaker and the addressee, and whether or not what is referred to by the noun phrase headed by koto or no is threatening to the addressee. Felicity conditions in performing speech acts also interact with the use conditions of koto and no. Even in cases when it is predicted that koto or no does not occur, the speaker may use koto or no to convey the impression that the speaker believes that the condition holds true in order to achieve his goals including making the addressee feel good or not making the addressee feel bad. In narratives, the distinction between koto and no is routinely utilized in order to organize a discourse. |
