The Japanese Existential Possession: A Case Study of Pragmatic Disambiguation

The Japanese existential construction can be used either to assert the presence of something/someone in a certain location (the locative reading) or to indicate that something is an integral part of another (the part-whole reading). It has been noted, however, that the part-whole reading seems to disappear when the nominative NP precedes the locative PP. Contrary to the existing analyses which make appeal to some constraint on movement to derive this disambiguation effect, this paper presents an information structural account. The analysis is empirically supported by the lack of disambiguation in embedded contexts and the significant role of contextual information that helps the ‘missing’ partwhole interpretation to re-emerge.