Are Pronouns Always Zero in Zero Pronominal Languages? : The Case in Japanese

This paper presents the results of a comparative text analysis of English anaphoric pronouns & their Japanese counterparts. It first demonstrates that although anaphoric pronouns in English are often compared to zero pronominals in Japanese, not all, but only some, of the English anaphoric pronouns have their counterparts in zero pronominals in the same context in Japanese, and then argues that discourse and perspective factors, which are both structurally prominent in Japanese, play a crucial role in anaphor resolution in the language.