In this section an attempt will be made to provide scene— descriptive sentences (henceforth S-D sentences) and qualifying sentences (hen ceforth Q sentences) with more illuminating characterisation.
As seen before Q sentences do not occur with time-specifying w o r d s . The semantics of Q sentences in which the predicate qualifies the
subject is not usually compatible with the notion of temporal specifi city .
(26) Watashi WA onna desu. I TOP woman COP 'I'm a w o m a n .'
(27) Oosutoraria WA Nihon yori zutto hiroi. Australia TOP Japan than by far is spacious 'Australia is far more spacious than J a p a n. ' (28) Imooto WA otonashii kodomo datta.
my younger sister TOP quiet child was(COP) 'My younger sister was a quiet child. '
All of the sentences above would be anomalous sentences with temporal specification such as k y o o 'today'. isshuu kan m a e 'a week ago', etc. The quality of the subject entities which are indicated by each predication is not of a temporary, transitory nature. Examples (26) - (28) cannot semantically be considered temporary, but if a qualifica tion may conceivably be of transitory nature, the subject could be
marked by GA as in the example of (2) and create a feeling of tem porariness. [Repeated as (29).]
(29) Hoshi GA kirei da. star NOM beautiful COP 'The stars look beautiful.'
The omnitemporal nature of Q sentences, however, does not exclude the possibility of sentences being in the past or future tense. Sentence (28) is in the past tense and what it states is that in the past world, 'my sister' was a quiet child but it does not say that her being a quiet child was a momentary phenomenon in that past world. Assuming 'my sister' was still a child in 1965, the sentence would not be acceptable with an adverbial phrase like that below.
(30) *1965 nen aki, imooto WA otonashii kodomo datta. year autumn my younger sister quiet child was(COP) '*In the autumn of 1965 my younger sister was a quiet child.' Unlike Q sentences, S-D sentences are not of an enduring nature. They describe how things are (or were, or will be ) at a given time and do not make reference to periods outside the given time frame. How momentary is the time frame of S—D sentences, or for what particular length of time do S-D sentences become Q sentences, cannot be answered or perhaps need not be answered, for it is people's naive realism that cuts a piece of the world, conceptualises it and codes it into their own language. How things really are and how people see them need not coincide in a strict mathematical sense. If stars are shining beauti fully in the sky, people conceive it as happening now even though the stars will probably keep shining until the dawn, exactly as they have shone in the past and will be shining in future.
S—D sentences necessarily involve a temporal reference to which its propositional content applies. Existential sentences which are included as S—D sentences seem to necessarily involve not a temporal reference but a spatial one. It is a philosophical question as to whether time
is more basic than space, or vice versa, or how interdependent the concepts of time and space are. It is not my intention here to answer these questions because S—D sentences are sufficiently characterised as necessarily having a temporal and/or spatial specification, whilst Q sentences do not. This means that the truth value of S-D sentences can only be determined against the temporal or spatial reference the proposition purports to describe; the truth value of Q sentences however, can be determined without such temporal or spatial reference insofar as the subject entity is properly identified. Again observe sentences (1) and (2):
(1) Hoshi WA kirei da. star TOP beautiful COP 'Stars are beautiful things.' (2) Hoshi GA kirei da.
NOM
'The stars look beautiful.'
The truth value of (2) cannot be decided unless it is known at which place and at what time the sentence is referring to. Sentence (1) on the other hand can be decided to be true if one knows what stars are.6
It is noted that some linguists including Kuno have noticed that for generic statements in Japanese the subject is marked by WA. However no one has seriously investigated and explained why the subject in such sentences must always be WA and why GA can never be used to compose such sentences. For instance, 'aboutness' is attributed to theme NP WA as its meaning and WA in generic sentences is said to exist there because generic sentences are about their subject NPs. However, it is circulatory since the 'aboutness' meaning of theme NP WA is often extracted from generic sentences in the first place. Our analysis of
6 In this particular case because the proposition is a subjective one, one might argue that it simply cannot be decided to be true or false. Such an argument is indeed valid but it is not a relevant argument in line with my current discussion.
WA sentences and GA sentences as inherently possessing different temporal specificities (which are caused by GA and WA themselves) seems to provide a valid explanation for this phenomenon.
Putting aside the numerous philosophical problems associated with the notion of generic propositions, let us define here generic propositions as analytical propositions, that is, propositions that "hold with respect to all possible worlds" (Rescher 1979:52). Generic propositions defined in this way are to be conceived as omnitemporal and they are not temporally restricted. We can explain in this way how generic propositions in Japanese are expressed in the form of a WA sentence.
(31) Sankakkei no naikaku________no wa___ WA 180 do desu. triangle GEN interior angle GEN total TOP degrees COP 'The interior angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees.' (32) Taiyoo WA higashi kara noboru.
sun TOP east from rise 'The sun rises from the east.'
(33) Mizu WA sanso to suiso kara natteiru. water TOP oxygen and hydrogen from is formed 'Water is made of oxygen and hydrogen .'
Gnomic propositions are different from generic propositions in that they do not so much express necessary, analytical truths but general truths which are nurtured and passed on from generation to generation in a given culture. Gnomic propositions often appear as proverbs and sayings. Although gnomic propositions differ in a strict philosophical sense from generic propositions, they nevertheless share the com monality of the same temporal specification; just as generic proposi tions are temporally unrestricted, so are gnomic propositions. Therefore in Japanese it can be shown that gnomic propositions are also often expressed as WA sentences.
(34) Oboreru mono WA wara o mo tsukamu. drowning man TOP straw ACC even grab
(35) Noo aru taka WA tsurae kakusu. brain have hawk TOP claws hide
'A hawk with brains hides its claws. (A man of real ability is humb l e.)'
(36) Yamai WA ki kara. sickness mind from
'Sickness comes from the mind.'