| Discourse is an interactional process. Speakers use various types of strategies in order to maintain the smooth flow of speech or to deal with potential problems in the course of discourse.; Although potential problems of ambiguity, triggered by the common occurrences of ellipsis, might arise more frequently in Japanese than many other languages, Japanese speakers can use a variety of language-specific devices in order to compensate for the problem by providing an additional clarity without disrupting the flow of speech. One of those linguistic devices called "Dislocation" is performed by placing constituents after the main verbals. In this thesis, dislocation will be examined as violation of the canonical word order SOV.; Although dislocation has been studied by linguists in the past, only the functional features have been examined, and other concomitant factors have been neglected. However, because the speaker's use of dislocation is based on his assessment of how the addressee is able to comprehend the referent intended for ellipsis from the appropriate context, we need to see dislocation in terms of cognitive processes as well.; Therefore, in this thesis, dislocation in Japanese discourse will be examined and discussed from both the functional and cognitive perspectives. Especially, with respect to cognitive considerations, the categories of Information status, namely, Given and Inferrables, and the linguistic contexts will be used in order to show two types of dislocation for two different purposes. |
