THE THEORY OF TERRITORY OF INFORMATION - THE CASE OF JAPANESE

This paper proposes a pragmatic theory of the territory of information . Just as many animals, including humans, have territories of which th ey claim their ownership, this paper asserts that the use of human lan guage is controlled by a notion of territory. The target of analysis i n terms of this notion here is Japanese. Arguments are presented which demonstrate that the notion of territory does indeed play a major rol e in the language. A formalization of the theory of territory of infor mation is attempted, and, using examples from Japanese, the details of the theory are explained and justified. Finally, applications of the theory to other languages and to a variety of pragmatic phenomena are suggested.