Logophoric and anaphoric 'otagai' in Japanese: an acceptability study

Sammanfattning: This study revolves around the Japanese reciprocal pronoun otagai ‘each other’. Native Japanese speakers were asked to judge the acceptability of 48 Japanese sentences. The goal was to see if they would treat otagai as a logophor if it resided in the embedded possessor position of the embedded object. A comparison was made between logophoric sentences whose only possible antecedent was in the same embedded clause as otagai, and logophoric sentences whose only possible antecedent lay outside of the embedded clause in the position of the matrix subject. Sentences which had otagai in a syntactically anaphoric position in the embedded clause were added for comparison. They too had the only possible antecedent either inside the embedded clause or outside of the clause in the matrix subject position. The results show that the anaphoric sentences had a low level of acceptability in the cases where long-distance binding was necessary and a high level of acceptability when it was not. A high level of acceptability was found for the logophoric sentences which did not require long-distance binding. In the case of the logophoric sentences which did require long-distance binding, there was an even distribution between low and high levels of acceptability. It was concluded that otagai in the embedded possessor position of an embedded object can indeed take a long-distance antecedent if context allows for it.