ellipsis in japaneseby john hinds

Ellipsis in Japanese by John HindsReview by: John H. HaigThe Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Nov., 1983), pp. 180-188Published by: American Association of Teachers of JapaneseStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/489108 .

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180 Vol. 18, No. 2

REVIEWS

ELLIPSIS IN JAPANESE, by John Hinds. Carbondate, USA, and Edmonton, Canada: Linguistic Research, Inc., 1982. Pp. xi + 257. $24.

Reviewed by John H. Haig

Hinds introduces and applies to the general problem of ellipsis in Japanese an eclectic variety of heuristic strategies for the interpretation and reconstruction of elements missing from a sentence, drawing extensively on work done in the fields of cognitive psychology and, especially, artificial intelligence. Although Hinds claims to have developed a theoretical model (p. 5) of the interpretation of ellipted elements in Japanese, he gives us, instead, a number of pragmatic strategies and illustrates their application in various situations.

Chapter 1 defines the problems to be examined, drawing a distinction between ellipsis, which is said to be "the omission of an element or of several elements from the surface form of an utterance" (p. 3) and deletion, which is said to occur as a result of a theory of grammar that posits the presence in an underlying structure of elements that need not, or in some cases cannot, appear in surface structure. Thus in the example below, while (1 = 1.4b)1 clearly involves ellipsis of at least the subject and the object, (2a = 1.4), in some theories of syntax, involves the rule of Equi-NP Deletion applying cyclically to the two underlying Johns as part of its derivation from (2b = 1.4a), but nevertheless is felt to be a complete sentence and thus does not involve ellipsis.

(1) Yomitagatte iru. "(Someone) is showing signs of wanting to read (someth ing)."

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Association of Teachers of Japanese

(2) (a) John ga hon o yomitagaru. subj book obj read-want-show signs of -

present tense "John shows signs of wanting to read books."

(b) S (Johns(Johns (John hon yom-ru) ta-i)gar-ru)

Of course, there are cases of deletion that also leave an identifiable hole in the surface structure and thus qualify as instances of ellipsis. Hinds notes the pattern in (3 = 1.3b) in which the verb is missing from the first clause due either to the rule of Gapping or Right Node Raising.

(3) Watasi wa sakana o, yoshiko wa gohan o tabeta. I top fish obj top rice obj ate "I ate fish and Yoshiko rice."

Another case of overlap, not discussed by Hinds, may be that of Imperative Deletion, in which a second person subject is deleted, as in (4).

(4) Sono hon o koko ni motte-koi. that book obj here to take-come "Bring that book here!"

While Hinds' dichotomy seems to work well in many cases, things are not entirely so clear as Chapter 1 may imply. Consider, for example, the case of relative clauses.

(5) (Taroo ga suki-na) okasi subj 1 ikes cookies

"the cookies that Taroo likes"

Depending on the level to which Hinds intends his analysis to be applied, the object of suki-da 'like' (i.e., okasi 'cookies') may or not be considered ellipted. A similar problem in the definition of ellipsis arises in (pseudo-) cleft sentences.

(6) Watasi ga tabeta no wa ano sakana (o) da. I subj ate that fish (obj) is

"It's that fish that I ate."

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Whether sakana is moved, ellipted, or deleted from the clause preceeding the no depends entirely on the level to which the definition Hinds gives is meant to apply. The only remarks on this problem (ch. 4, n. 2, p. 236) seem to imply that the gap in the no-clause of (6) would be considered an example of ellipsis, but are not entirely clear, stating that, "a proposition" (which seems to be the unit within which ellipsis may occur - JHH) "is considered to be either an independent clause with optional attached dependent clauses, or it is considered to be a single clause regardless of whether the clause is dependent or independent."

These remarks concerning the amount of grey area in the definition may seem a quibble, but exactly the same pro- cesses necessary to interpret an ellipted phrase such as in (1) are necessary to interpret a relative clause or a cleft sentence such as (6). Note that the focus of (6) need not have been the object but could have been a tem- poral or locative adverbial as in (7a, b), indicating that the interpretive methods sketched in Chapters 4 and 5 for ellipted NPs are equally necessary to the interpretation of clefts, even though neither (6) nor (7a, b) is "elliptical," taken as a whole.

(7) (a) Watasi ga tabeta no wa yuube da. last-night

"It's last night that I ate."

(b) Watasi ga tabeta no wa ano resutoran (de) da. that restaurant (at)

"It was (at) that restaurant that I ate."

Chapter Two, "Cognitive Structures and Ellipsis," introduces the grammatical framework, which Hinds claims reflects cognitive structures, that is used in Chapters Three, "Verbal Ellipsis," Six, "Particle Ellipsis," and Seven, "Ellipsis and Postposing." Hinds considers each verbal (=conjugable predicate element) to be associated with both a set of terminals (that is, a case frame) and a set of markers that define semantic (Hinds prefers "cognitive") conditions that must be met by the NPs filling in the slots in the terminals. Consider (8 = 2.2) below.

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(8) NP ga NP o NP ni [ ] ireru 'put in'

sentient movable enclosed being object location

The top row of terminals indicates that the verbal ireru takes three NP arguments case marked with ga, o, and ni. The bottom line of markers indicates that the ga-marked NP must be a sentient (or purposeful) being, the o-marked NP a movable object, and the ni-marked NP an enclosed location. Hinds claims, "these markers may vary in composition, but always represent some cognitively significant cate- gory" (p. 43).

In verbal ellipsis this case frame is used by a listener to reconstruct the missing verbal, given the case frame and the NPs actually appearing in the utterance to be inter- preted. As an example, consider the following song title.

(9 = 2.10) hosi ni inori o star to prayer obj "(I) (offer) a prayer to the stars"

In order to represent the process he hypothesizes a listener goes through in interpreting this title, Hinds uses a dia- gram with the verbal in a central position and the arguments attached by arrows.

(10 = 2.11)

/ [ ? 3]

sentient abstract being object

<hosi> nz <inori> o

First, based on some heuristics not explained until Chapter 4 (p. 96), the agent is reconstructed as watasi "I" ga and the marker "sentient being" is put on the arrow connecting the agent to the verb to be reconstructed, giving the cognitive structure shown in (11).

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(11) NP ga NP ni NP o [ ]

sentient sentient abstract being being concept

From the long list of verbals that fit this pattern, including, for instance, okuru, dasu both 'send,' ageru 'give,' kaku 'write,' tanomu 'request,' itadaku 'receive,' negau, kou both 'plead for,' among others, the listener chooses, according to Hinds,sasageru 'offer.' Hinds notes (p. 234, n. 4) that other verbals may be possible, but remarks that the phrase inori o sasageru 'offer a prayer' is highly cohesive, guiding the listener to choose this verbal over the many other possibilities.

Particle ellipsis (Chapter 6) is handled similarly. Given the verbal, the terminals actually occurring, and the markers associated with them, the listener recreates the missing particle. For example, knowing the case frame for itadaku '(I) receive,' given as (12 = 6.13), the listener has little trouble interpreting (13 = 6.14).

(12) NP ga NP ni/kara NP o [ ] itadaku 'receive'

speaker/ sentient movable speaker's being object ingroup

(13) hutari, atakusi mada ne, otegami itadaite-ru kedo 2-people I still letter receiving but "I'm still getting letters from two of them, though."

Only otegami qualifies as a movable object; atakusi fills the first slot in the frame so hutari must fill the source slot. Considering such examples as (12, 13), Hinds sug- gests that not only overt case marking, but also word order and the markers associated with a given verbal are instrumental in marking grammatical relations. Even though (13) does not preserve the first two, the markers are suf- ficient to interpret the sentence successfully.

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Returning to example (5), the frame analysis for suki-da, 'like,' shown in (14 = 6.10), explains why (5) is unam-

biguous, compared, for instance, to (15), since in (5) only Taroo can fill the first frame slot while in (15) either Taroo or Hanako may.

(14) NP ga NP ga [ ] suki-da 'like'

sentient any concrete being object or

abstract concept

(15) [Taroo ga suki-na] Hanako subj 1 ikes

"Hanako, whom Taroo likes" "Hanako, who likes Taroo"

Since nothing is available in the frame to disambiguate the two interpretations of (15), some speakers have developed an alternative frame for suki-da that is used exactly when the second NP is a sentient being.

(16) NP ga NP o [ ] suki-da ' 1ike'

sentient sentient being being

Alternatively, in the interpretation in which Taroo is

liked, many speakers apply No-Koto Incorporation, which can only apply to the objects of thinking, feeling, or

saying verbs, cf. Kuno (1972).

(17) [Taroo no koto ga/o suki-na] Hanako

Further evidence for the importance of the frames associated with verbals may be found in child language studies such as

Harada et al. (1976), in which it was found that children

rely first on semantic plausibility (markers), then on word

order, and lastly on particle marking in the interpretation of Japanese relative clauses.

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In dealing with nominal ellipsis, however, Hinds makes little explicit use of the cognitive structures introduced in Chapter 3, although he obviously has them in mind as a means of telling: (a) when NP ellipsis has occurred, and (b) the case and semantic features associated with the ellipted NP. Even with these matters settled, however, the number of possible referents often remains quite large, so that it becomes necessary to decide among them. To this end, Hinds introduces in Chapter 4 the notion of topic hierarchies: paragraph, segment, and detail topics, claiming that the referent of an ellipted NP is, "the low- est topic, or part of the topic, which is compatible with the selectional restrictions (markers) of the propositional verbal associated with the ellipted form" (p. 91).

To illustrate the hierarchy of topics, to introduce performative-like verbals, and to keep track of speech-act participants, Hinds introduces a graphic descriptive device he terms a reticulum, described in detail in Hinds (1976) and Momoi (1978).

Hinds notes that there are cases of nominal ellipsis that are not interpretable even by the topic hierarchy strategy of Chapter 4, but which are nevertheless unambigu- ous. To handle such cases, he adds in Chapter 4 and expands on in Chapter 5 the concept of a script borrowed from artificial intelligence research. Essentially, a script is a predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions defin-

ing a well-known situation. Hinds' primary example of the use of scripts in the interpretation of nominal ellipsis concerns a discussion of cheating on exams, a situation he assumes is familiar to all or most members of a literate

society. Included in the script for cheating are a number of props including an exam paper. Given knowledge of this

script, Hinds claims a listener can easily fill in missing information. Consider the following example (= 4.22).

(18) K-1. un kika to kaiseki? uh geometry and analysis "Right, um, geometry and analysis?"

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K- 2. kaiseki, ato ikko analysis after one "analysis, and one more"

K-3. yappari, koo, ore ga [mondai] nandai of-course wh I subj problem how--many

toita ka-na solved wonder "Of course, um, I don't know how many [problems] I was able to solve."

The discussion being about exams, the script supplies exam papers with problems as a necessary prop, enabling the listener to unambiguously fill in mondai as an object. Note, however, that in this example, at least, the frame analysis would have supplied the same information, especially given that the counter nandai rules out other possible objects for toku 'solve, untie,' being restricted to counting such things as mondai 'problem,' wadai 'topic,' and dai 'title.'

Chapter 7 looks at possible relations between ellipsis and postposing, noting that, although the postposing of noun phrases to post-verbal position (or considering that Japanese is probably subject to a head-final constraint [cf. Kato (1977)], introduction of supplementary information by means of an incomplete second sentence) is often used where the speaker has suddenly realized, possibly from non- linguistic clues, that the listener has failed to interpret an ellipted element, it can also be used, contrary to previous claims, to introduce new information as in the following example (= 7.11).

(19) boku wa yaranai, biiru sika I topic don't-do beer except-for "I don't drink, except for beer."

In sum, although he has not developed a "model" of the interpretation of ellipted elements in Japanese, Hinds has demonstrated a number of strategies that, depending on the validity of the cognitive model to which they appeal, may or may not represent those actually used by speakers of

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Japanese but which are certainly of potential use to language learners faced with the pervasive ellipsis of Japanese.

The book is in soft covers, clearly printed in large, easy-to-read typescript, though the margins are a little narrow for notes. Proofreading seems to have been quite thorough; I counted only 15 typographical errors, of which the following may be potentially misleading:

p. 35, 1. 18, in should be is p. 41, 1. 16, Sacks et al., 1976 should be 1974 p. 97, 1. 8 (?) citation to footnote 4 is missing p. 109, 1. 16 literature should be literate

FOOTNOTES

1. Examples from Hinds are cited as (chapter.number) with romanization regularized to match other examples.

REFERENCES

Harada, S-I, T. Uyeno, H. Hayashibe, H. Yamada. 1976. On the Development of Perceptual Strategies in Children: A Case Study of the Japanese Child's Comprehension of the Relative Constructions. AnnuaZ Bulletin of the Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics. Tokyo: University of Tokyo.

Hinds, J. 1976. Aspects of Japanese Discourse Structure. Tokyo: Ka i takusha.

Kato, Y. 1977. A Formal Property of Japanese Phrase Categories. Sophia Linguistica 3:75-83.

Kuno, S. 1972. Evidence for Subject Raising in Japanese. Papers in Japanese Linguistics 1.1:24-51.

Momoi, K. 1978. Review of Aspects of Japanese Discourse Structure, by John Hinds. Journal of the Association

of Teachers of Japanese 12:41-53.

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