Five-level classification of clause linkage in Japanese

On the basis of Japanese data, this paper proposes a five-level classification of clause linkage. Level IV and Level V of this classification correspond to the epistemic domain and the speech-act domain, respectively, of Sweetser’s (1990) classification. Level I corresponds to the content domain of her classification. In addition, the present paper sets up Levels II and III, as distinct from Level I. It shows that different clause-linkage markers (hereafter CLMs) have different distributions in terms of the five levels. For example, some CLMs can be used in all of the five levels. There are also CLMs that are confined to the lower levels, and also those which are limited to the higher levels. Furthermore, some CLMs have a continuous distribution, while others have a discontinuous distribution. Some of the CLMs exhibit different distributions in terms of Levels I, II, and III. This furnishes evidence for setting up Levels II and III, as distinct from Level I and also as distinct from each other.