O Morfema de topicalização WA - um breve histórico

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present a diachronic account of the functionalsemantic theories about the grammatical particle wa, argued by modem theoreticians (since the Taisho period [1912 ~j) of the Japanese language. The principal functions of wa are to indicate shudai (theme) and taihi (contrast), but few theoreticians have given significant attention to the identification of its functions in the moment of an utterance. According to our study, the following fact was revealed: for the analysis of that identification, it is necessary to consider not only the word preceding wa from the syntactic-semantic point of view, but also the intention/subjectivity of the speaker, the situational context (discourse flow) and the knowledge of the addressee, including an analysis from the pragmatic point of view.