Japanese continuative conjunction ga as a semantic boundary marker

Prescriptivists have been recognizing Conflictive/Contrastive (i.e., “although, but”; the primary dictionary meaning) as the only legitimate function of the Japanese conjunction ga and denouncing all other functions as causes of confusion. However, as is well known by a number of descriptive analyses, non-Conflictive/Contrastive ga uses are common in communicative settings. One recent study analyzed actual ga occurrences in a wide range of discourse settings. Although it successfully identified five ga types according to their pragmatic functions, it failed to examine the pragmatic and discourse functions of Continuative ga (one of the five functions) in a systematic form. This study analyzes pragmatic and discourse functions of Continuative ga to reveal that Continuative ga functions as a discourse marker that indicates the presence of a semantic boundary. Based on findings in the pragmatic analysis and studies on sociocultural characteristics of Japanese communication, variation analysis in this study reveals that Continuative ga frequencies indicate degrees of the addressers' sensitivity to the addressees' potential reactions to their remarks.