Re: The Interpretive Functions of the So-Called Japanese Topic Marker Wa

The main objective of the present study is twofold. By scrutinizing the meanings associated with the so-called Japanese topic marker wa, I first identify distinct interpretations that have been discussed in the literature under the rubric of “contrastive” reading. Contrary to a widely accepted view that wa is semantically ambiguous (e.g., thematic wa and contrastive wa in Kuno (1973)), I then argue that wa is unambiguously thematic at the semantic level and that distinct readings, including two subtypes of contrastive readings, are derived at the discourse level as a result of interactions between multiple wa-phrases or between predicates. Finally, I demonstrate that, once information structure is brought into the picture, the different contrastive readings so identified follow directly from distinct types of thematic progression as discussed in Daneš (1974).