My talk discusses how and why repetition operates in the Japanese language. Interestingly linguists of various persuasions have intensively analyzed deletion in language but they seldom dealt with repetition in language. Kuno (1978:8) defined the function of deletion as “lowering redundancy of a sentence by deleting information known to the listener”. It sounded as if the function of repetition were only elevating redundancy level of information. Kuno’s analysis is correct in so far as strictly semantic information is concerned, but human communication needs more than merely logical semantics. After reconsidering Makino (1980) I will bring in evidence that repetition not always leads to redundancy. Rather it has such functions of politeness, confirmation, involvement in dialogue, expression of emotion, cohesiveness, styles, idiomaticity, rhetoric, and above all “interactivity”. Towards the end of my talk I will touch upon some implications for foreign language education.

Professor Makino is an Emeritus Professor of Japanese and Linguistics since 1991. Currently researches Linguistic inquiry into human brain through analysis of non-creative metaphors and other cognitive linguistic analyses. He received his B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from Waseda University, B.A. and M.A. in Linguistics from University of Tokyo, and Ph.D. in Linguistics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been the Academic Director of a three-summer M.A. Program in Japanese Pedagogy at Columbia University since 1996. Awarded the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service in the Profession in 2001, and Award of the Society for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language, 2007.