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SPECIAL TOPICS IN INTERMEDIATE JAPANESE GRAMMAR
D. Anaphor ellipsis (Zero anaphora)
(Seibei's parents were aware that he bought gourds once in a while.
(He) had some ten gourds with skins costing from three or four to fif-
teen cents. (Shiga Naoya: Seibei and the Gourds))
In (12), Seibei wa or kare wa 'he' is ellipted in the second sentence.
Because of this "invisible anaphora," the two sentences in (12) form a cohesive
sequence.
(2) Phenomena of Tense and Formality Switchings
A. Tense Switching
Usually a series of past events are narrated in the past tenses. But primarily in
written Japanese discourse that narrates a past event, past tenses often switch
to nonpast tenses. The following is a passage from a famous novel called
Yama no Oto 'The Sound of the Mountain' by Yasunari Kawabata. Everything
that is being described in this passage concerns past events. So the English
native readerlwriter, for example, expects the author to use nothing but the past
tense.
