Nominal arguments, such as the subject and the object are not grammatically required to be overt in Japanese, and are frequently unexpressed, approximately 50% of the time in written narrative texts. Despite this in high frequency of ellipsis, Japanese is not equipped with such familiar devices as the cross-referencing systems and verbal inflections commonly found in pro-drop languages for referent identification. Yet the mechanisms governing argument ellipsis have been little explicated. This thesis elucidates the linguistic mechanisms with which to identify the referents of ellipted arguments. / These mechanisms stem from three tiers of linguistic system. Each sentence is structured in such a way as to anchor the subject., (using Sentence devices following the principle of direct alignment), with argument inferring cues on the verbal predicate (using Predicate devices). These subject oriented sentences are cohesively sequenced with the topic as a pivot (using Discourse devices). These subject oriented sentences are cohesively sequenced with the topic as a pivot (using Discourse devices). It is this topicalised subject which is most prone to ellipsis. I develop an algorithm summing up these mechanisms, using naturally occurring texts. I demonstrate how it can detect the existence of ellipsis in sentences and track the referential identity of it. / A generalisation for ellipsis resolution and the way in which the algorithm is constituted is as follows. Sentence devices formulate sentences to make the subject most prone to ellipsis, discourse devices enable the interaction of wa (the topic maker) and ga (the nominative marker), which mark the majority of subjects, to provide the default reading for referent identification of ellipsis, and predicate devices furnish additional cues to verify that reading. Since Japanese is an SOV language, it is intuitively tenable from the perspective of language processing that the interplay of wa/ga representing subjects gives initial cues from predicate devices. This multiple layering of mechanisms, therefore, can determine referents for ellipted arguments more accurately.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245057 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Nariyama, Shigeko |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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