The Interpretation of Null and Overt Pronouns in Japanese: Grammatical and Pragmatic Factors

Pronoun interpretation in English has been demonstrated to be sensitive to an interaction between grammatical and pragmatically-driven factors. This study investigated the interpretation of pronouns in Japanese, which has both null and overt forms. Thirty-two native speakers of Japanese participated in a passage completion experiment with transfer-of-possession contexts, varying prompt type, aspect, and topic/nominativemarking of the previous subject. Two judges annotated the referents of the matrix subjects and coherence relations in the completed passages. Japanese overt pronouns were revealed to pattern closely with English overt pronouns in their sensitivity to pragmatic factors, whereas Japanese null pronouns were predominantly governed by grammatical position. Somewhat surprisingly, topic-marking did not influence reference or coherence relations. The data suggest distinctive patterns of interactions between grammatical and pragmatic factors in the interpretation of null and overt pronouns in Japanese, and cast doubt on the existence of a division of labor between the two forms.