Functions of Japanese ga-clefts in discourse: A relevance-theoretic approach

This article deals with the functional properties of Japanese ga-clefts in news reports. The main points argued here are (i) that Amano’s (1995a, b) test framework which is designed to distinguish two options for ga-clefts is not in fact sufficient to do so; (ii) that in the framework of Relevance Theory, an alternative analysis can be proposed which claims that ga-clefts can be adequately accounted for without appealing to the semantic/pragmatic notions such as presupposition and focus, information structure, “direction of spesificity” and so on; and (iii) that Japanese ga-clefts can be classified into three subcategories.