ABSTRACT
Using parallel corpora of a Japanese short story and its Thai translation, this chapter examines referential forms in the two languages and factors that influence referential choice. The chapter presents an overview of previous works on personal reference in Japanese and Thai along with comparative studies of referential forms in the two languages. Next, the current research study is described. Focusing on human referents in subject position, 541 pairs of referential forms in Japanese and Thai are analyzed in terms of person and form. It is found that Japanese contains more zero forms than Thai and that Thai shows more overt forms than Japanese. The patterns are accounted for by two factors: morphological and structural differences and socio-cultural import suggested by referential choice. More specifically, perceiver-less and cognizer-less expressions and nominalized action predicates in Japanese motivate the non-use of overt referential forms in the original text and explain the need for overt forms in the translation. Compared to Japanese, Thai also exhibits more reliance on nominals and pronominals as linguistic tools to convey attitude, feeling, and the relationship between the speaker and the referent. Overall, the chapter contributes to comparative studies of Japanese and Thai as well as typological studies of personal reference.
