What was only tacitly understood in the preceding section on the discussion of EA is that it is the time and place the statement is intended to describe or be concerned with that the existential proposition expressed by NP GA is bound to. The existential proposition in (7) is analysed to be bound to the time and place the statement (5) is concerned with, which happens to be the time and place of utterance for this particular statement.
What seems to require further analysis is existential sentence patterns in Japanese. In Japanese both NP WA and NP GA are possible selections in existential constructions as in the sentences below:
(8) Tonari no inu WA niwa ni iru. neighbour GEN dog TOP garden in exist 'The neighbour's dog is in the garden.' (9) Tonari no inu GA niwa ni iru.
NOM
'The neighbour's dog is in the garden.' Both (8) and (9) above can be analysed as (10).
(10) There is the neighbour's dog and it is in the garden.
The existential proposition in (10) as the analysis of (8) is however, a presupposition whose function is to invoke the hearer's identifying knowledge and as such there is no problem arising. The existential proposition in (10) as the analysis of (9) on the other hand is an
assertion and I analyse that it is bound to the time and/or place of the statement. Written explicitly the analysis of (9) is:
(10)' There is the neighbour's dog in the garden and it is in the garden.
Statement (9) is spatially bound to 'the garden', and accordingly the existential proposition in (10)' is to be interpreted to be bound to the place, 'the garden'. Consequently such an analysis leads to the conclusion that (10)' is in fact a type of tautology, because the former existential proposition asserts 'there is the neighbour's dog in the garden' and the latter 'it is in the garden' . A tautology should hold the value of necessary truth but statement (9) obviously does not possess necessary truth. All of this seems to defy the validity of the analysis of (9) as (10) and even the proposed analyses of EA as well. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to first observe an interesting phenomenon in Japanese whereby an entity whose existence in the real world is debatable such as a ghost may not take GA marking in an existential construction. For instance, when debating the existence of ghosts in the real world, one can assert or deny their existence only by using WA (and not GA) as below:
(11) Obake WA genjitsu ni iru. ghost TOP reality in exist 'Ghosts exist in reality.' (12) Obake WA genjitsu ni inai.
not exist 'Ghosts do not exist in reality.'
The usage of GA in such sentences simply does not yield acceptable sentences.
(13) *0bake GA genjitsu ni iru. (14) *0bake GA genjitsu ni inai.
However if one is talking about a certain fictitious world where ghosts are understood to exist, GA may acceptably be used.
(15) Obake GA asoko ni iru! ghost over there at exist 'There is a ghost over there!'
Similarly for someone who is actually seeing a ghost in reality, an existential construction with GA like the following would be uttered felicitously.
(16) Anata no ushiro ni obake GA iru! you GEN back at ghost NOM exist 'There is a ghost behind you!'
The observations regarding an uncertain entity that, i) in asserting or denying its existence in reality GA cannot be used and, ii) usage of GA for an uncertain entity in an existential construction indicates that the speaker is actually seeing it or that the sentence is about a fictitious world where the uncertain entities exist, require a somewhat different notion of EA when it is expressed by NP GA in existential construction.
Unlike the usual EA which necessarily requires the assertion of an item at the particular time and place of the statement, the notion of EA expressed by NP GA in existential statements means an assertion of an item in the world (and not at the particular time or place) with which the statement is concerned. Such a world would normally be the
real world where the speaker and the hearer are.
The problem of tautology may be solved and GA and WA distribution in existential sentence constructions may be made comprehensible by accepting this slightly different notion of EA that applies specifically and only to existential sentence constructions. For example, the former proposition in (10)' must be modified to assert that there is the neighbour's dog in the world where the speaker and the hearer are . It must not be or cannot be understood as 'there is the neighbour's dog in the garden' as previously analysed. Then (10)' is no longer a tautology. NP GA cannot be used in asserting or denying the
existence of ghosts in the real world because such GA sentences [like (13) and (14)] would only form either a tautology or a contradiction, neither of which is acceptable. In such a debate one can only identify the entity with the hearer. In other words one can only mark the entity with WA. It would not be possible to use GA for uncertain entities such as ghosts unless the person actually believes to be witnessing or have witnessed the entity.
I thus claim that the notion of EA when expressed by NP GA in existential constructions must be understood as binding an item to the world the sentence is concerned with, (which is normally the real world where the speaker and the hearer are) and not as binding it to a specific time and/or place like the notion of EA is generally understood to perform for all other kinds of sentence constructions.
6.3.2 Contrary evidence?
There are sentences which seem to have GA and WA markings that rebut the analysis which has been proposed as denoting EA and EP. Observe the following:3
(17) Aki ni naru to, kigi WA/GA kooyoo o hajimeru. autumn to become COND trees red leaves ACC begin 'In autumn, trees begin to turn red.'
(18) Watashi ga asa ueki ni mizu o yatteiru to, I morning plants to water ACC be giving COND tonari no booya WA/GA mae o tootte iku. neighbour GEN boy front ACC passing go
'When I'm watering the plants in the morning, the neighbour's boy passes by the front (of the house) every day.'
(19) Hachiji ni naru to, musume WA/GA piano no 8 o'clock to become COND my daughter piano GEN renshuu o hajimeru.
practice ACC begin
3 These sentences are again taken to be free from discourse factors. Either WA or GA may be used naturally as the first sentences to start a conversation.
'At eight o'clock, my daughter starts practicing the piano.' In all three sentences, the subordinate clause is marked by to and such clauses function to signal "an action or state, upon the occurrence of which something else ALWAYS or HABITUALLY occurs." [Alfonso (1974:642)] Therefore due to the nature of the subordinate clause, it would be valid to assume that the content of the main clause must be of a habitual, in other words, more of a qualifying than of a scene-descrip tive nature. Providing the proposed analysis holds correct, then the subject marking of the main clause should be WA and GA would not be possible. However as the above sentences show, GA markings are all acceptable, seemingly refuting the hypothesis.
In order to explain the acceptable GA markings, one needs to understand that to clauses function to specify time; although to is traditionally called a conditional morpheme, it is more like a time adverbial clause marker. What sentences (17) to (19) state is that at time x (specified by the subordinate clause) , y (the main clause) happens. Therefore the main clause is indeed in this manner temporally bound. It happens because as the temporal specification made by a subordinate clause is easily interpreted as iterative, the statement as a whole can also assume non-temporally bound (and thus habitual) meaning.
The possibility of the two interpretations of temporal specification makes either marking of WA or GA acceptable. Sentences (17) to (19) are not counter examples of the analysis but may be considered to present supporting evidence, since if it were not for the analysis of EA and E P , the reason why both markings are accepted would not be easy to find. This fact serves to convince the validity of the analysis rather than to deny it.