Epistemology in grammar : a study of -guru in Japanese

Abstract

The difficulty of making assertions about other minds has continued to exercise a special fascination over philosophers and students of language precisely because of some of the problems outlined in the above quotation from the philosopher of language, Austin. The issues are at the heart of Epistemology - the study of knowledge. This study focuses on one linguistic device employed in Japanese to resolve, so to speak, some questions concerning what is in the mind of others. That mechanism is the bound morpheme -GARU, which is attached to a group of adjectives to verbalise them and which is usually glossed as 'show signs of'. Show more