The Notion of the Subject in Spoken Japanese:

Is a Subject a Required Category?

Abstract

The notion of Japanese subject has been controversial. Some linguists take the existence of subject for granted, and others deny the usefulness of the concept. The question regarding the Japanese subject has not yet been settled so far. It seems to me that some linguists collect only written data and that others collect conversational data. This might be one of the reasons for the controversy. With regard to his issue, Hoye (2008:6) states that the controversy over a Japanese subject might stem from the confusing structure of the Japanese language itself, from a historical background where Japanese was strongly influenced by Western languages, from application of generative grammar theory to the Japanese language by a number of successful Japanese linguists. In this paper, I will examine the actual conversational data I have collected for this research.