46 CHAPTER 1. THE SYNTAX
same thing. If a public speaker at some convention is talking about the
physics of Star Trek, then we can say that ”the subject of his talk is the
physics of Star Trek”, or that his talk should be interpreted within the con-
text of ”the physics of Star Trek”, making the two refer to essentially the
same idea – atopic.
Grammatically, the terms are much further apart. Rather than both
”subject” and ”context” being able to refer to some topic, the two mean
wildly different things. A ”context” is the overall topic of some text or con-
versation; it doesn’t necessarily have to be mentioned, but it is clear what
the text or conversation is all about. A ”subject”, on the other hand, refers
to specific words in individual sentences within a text or conversation. The
best way to indicate the difference when we use the words ”context” and
”subject” from a grammatical perspective is as follows:
”A sentence says something about a subject, within a certain con-
text.”
For instance, given that this section talks about ”context”, the sen-
tence ”It can be a problematic ’feature’ of Japanese for people who only
know English” is readily interpeted as meaning ”Context can be a prob-
lematic ’feature’ of Japanese for people who only know English”. You
know what ”it” refers to because of the context you’re reading it in. Had
this sentence been in a section on the sparsity of language, then you would
have understood ”it” to refer to ”the sparsity of Japanese”.
In Japanese, this concept of ”sentences say things about subjects
within a certain context” is taken further than in English. The following
conversation may illustrate this:
A:
B:
A:
B:
A: ......
Transcribed, this reads:A: atashi no koppu o mikakemasen deshita ka?
B: aa, mitemasen.
A: okashii wa. tsui sakki made moĴetandakedo.
B: ima no teeburu ni oitekiteshimaĴa no dewanai deshou ka.
A: a... soukamoshiremasen, ne.This conversation can be translated to natural sounding English in