Interactional frames and grammatical descriptions: The case of Japanese noun-modifying constructions

Examining usage variations in a Japanese construction, the paper argues that knowledge represented in “interactional frames” (e.g. Fillmore 1982) is an important and integral part of our understanding of the construction. The discussion focuses on variations in noun-modifying constructions (NMCs) that are considered to be non-prototypical in conversational Japanese and demonstrates that social context and the purpose of the on-going discourse are crucially involved in the actual usage of NMCs. The paper suggests the theoretical importance of including pragmatic and sociocultural perspectives in the grammatical description.