While studies of grammar and discourse are often investigated separately, this book seeks to bring these studies together and present an analysis of discourse observations in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). This combined grammar–discourse approach is rooted in RRG, a view of language from a communication-and-cognition perspective. RRG acknowledges communication as an important function of language and views grammar as the interface between three equally important and independent components, those being syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. This study assesses the effects of salience on discourse through the analysis of five morphosyntactic phenomena in Japanese and their application in RRG. Within this analysis is discussion of the bidimensional aspects of salience and how each dimension pertains to the morphosyntactic coding of information. This book also includes analysis of L2 Japanese discourse produced by adult native English-speakers and how their discourse is uniquely applied to RRG. Additionally, a comparison of L1–L2 discourse is presented from the viewpoint of bidimensionality of salience and second-language communicative competence. With the integration of discourse analysis with RRG, this study not only demonstrates the parallel architecture of grammar but also provides further evidence of bidirectional interfaces among syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

With these goals in mind, the importance of discourse data cannot be emphasized enough. This study could not have been undertaken without the speakers’ participation in data collection. First, I wish to acknowledge the seventy-three L1 Japanese-speakers and forty-two L2 Japanese-speakers for providing their written narratives discussed in chapters 3 and 4. Next, I would like to acknowledge Mitsuko Yamura-Takei, Miho Fujiwara, and Etsuko Yoshida, who, with the support of JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP23520481, collected the animation-based narratives included in this data set. I am indebted to this research group for not only sharing their data but also giving me a chance to explore Centering Theory, which eventually became the core framework employed in chapter 3. I would also like to acknowledge the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, whose publically available Japanese Learners’ Conversation Database is analyzed in chapter 5. Finally, the Japanese conversation data discussed in chapter 6 were originally presented in my 2005 monograph entitled Argument Encoding in Japanese Conversation, and I once again express my gratitude to, and acknowledge, the sixteen Japanese-speakers who participated in the collection of data.

This book has benefited immensely from comments and suggestions from many people in many places, including the participants of past Role and Reference Grammar Conferences and the audiences of talks I gave elsewhere. I also wish to thank Osamu Hieda, Kazuhiro Kawachi, Taeho Kim, Toshio Ohori, Prashant Pardeshi, and Fumio Watanabe for inviting me to present my earlier works related to this book. Special thanks are also due to Kata Balogh, Robert D. Van Valin Jr. and four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the manuscript, and Matthew Szczepaniak and John Gaunt for editorial assistance.

Lastly, much of my writing for this book took place during the outbreak and stay-at-home phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and I am grateful to my family for sharing time and space while I was preparing my manuscript.