Right-Dislocation by Japanese-Speaking Children: A Preliminary Analysis

Abstract

Japanese is a pro-drop, SOV language. However, in casual speech, there occur non-canonical orders in which some element appears to be right-dislocated (RD; e.g., (S)VO, (O)VS, etc.). This study was proposes an emergence order of different types of RD in Japanese through the analysis of two Japanese-speaking children’s right-dislocated utterances. The analysis makes use of several features (Type of Right-Dislocated Element, Repetition, Separation, Newness, and Joint Attention) and conservative criteria to classify right-dislocated utterances into different types. The results show that although the two children are quite different in RD rates, they start to use different types of RD in the same order: grammaticalized demonstratives > pragmatic repair > sophisticated pragmatics > grammatical repair. The results imply that (i) RD can be an indicator of the development of children’s pragmatic and grammatical awareness, and (ii) children’s pragmatic awareness might be one driving force for grammatical development. Possible explanations for the observed individual differences are also considered.