How Mutual Knowledge Constrains the Choice of Anaphoric Demonstratives in Japanese and English

It has been widely acknowledged that the choice of Japanese demonstratives (the distal a-series, the medial so-series, and the proximal ko-series) in their anaphoric use is regulated by the rules concerned with the interlocutors’ knowledge of the referent. In crosslinguistic discussions of anaphoric demonstratives, on the other hand, the effect of the interlocutors’ knowledge of the referent has not received such recognition. This paper has the following goals. First, it critically reviews Susumu Kuno’s seminal analysis of Japanese anaphoric demonstratives, and presents a modified version of it. Second, it argues that the interlocutors’ knowledge of the referent is relevant to the choice of the English demonstratives this and that too. Third, it provides a formal semantic analysis of anaphoric demonstratives in the two languages.