In:Emancipatory Pragmatics: Innovative approaches to pragmatics incorporating the concept of “ba”
Edited by Yoko Fujii, William F. Hanks, Sachiko Ide, Scott Saft and Kishiko Ueno
[Culture and Language Use 24] 2025
► pp. 144–168
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Differential manifestations of the impact of ba on grammar
Case studies from Japanese and Korean
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Published online: 2 December 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.24.06hor
https://doi.org/10.1075/clu.24.06hor
Abstract
This paper addresses the question of whether and how languages differ in terms of the extent to
which ba affects grammatical conventions. For this purpose, this paper compares grammatical phenomena
of Japanese and Korean that exhibit many typological similarities in lexico-grammatical structure including
grammaticalized honorification systems. Specifically, it probes into two grammatical phenomena of Japanese and Korean,
i.e. deictic demonstrative expressions and noun-modifying clause constructions, in order to see whether and how the
two languages differ from the perspective of the impact of ba on grammatical conventions. This paper
has revealed that grammatical conventions in Japanese tend to be affected more directly by the contingent, dynamic
interactive space (ba) or conventionalized common ground ba knowledge than in
Korean.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Japanese and Korean in contrast: A clue to the ba-based explanation
- 3.Two case studies on the grammar-pragmatics interface
in Japanese and Korean: Deictic demonstrative expressions and noun-modifying clause constructions- 3.1Deictic demonstrative expressions in Japanese and Korean
- 3.2Noun-modifying clause constructions in Japanese and Korean
- 4.Conclusion: Grammatical conventions and ba cross-linguistically
Acknowledgements Notes Abbreviations References
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