Onodera's work is one of the first historical-pragmatic studies of Japanese, which is typologically dissimilar to Indo-European languages. After providing background information (Ch. 1 and 2), Onodera (hereafter O) presents her latest thoughts on the evolution of Japanese discourse markers (DMs), dealing with two types coming from different sources: demo type connectives (so-called adversative conjunctions), originally from clause-final connecting devices (Ch. 3 and 4), and na elements (often called sentence-final particles (SFPs)/interjections of agreement), originally from SFPs (Ch. 5 and 6), followed by the conclusion.

Chapter 1 introduces the phenomena: the pragmaticalization of utterance-initial discourse markers coming from two different unit-final sources, demo type connectives (demo and dakedo) and the na group of final particles (na, noo, ne, etc.). Pragmaticalization is characterized by the meaning/functional change involving shifts to a more speaker-based, discourse-based meaning (12). O acknowledges the limits of diachronic pragmatic studies due to the limited amount of data available (i.e. written records of spoken language), and focuses on the Japanese of the Muromachi period onward to examine the development of Tokyo Japanese, treating Kamigata (Western) Japanese (pre-Muromachi data) as a useful reference. The analytical tool for this study, based on Traugott's tripartite functional-semantic model of language (1982), is applied to show how the meaning of an item changes along the cline from the ‘ideational’ to ‘textual’ and ‘expressive’ meanings.

Chapter 2 discusses four perspectives beneficial to this study; discourse/pragmatic, historical, typological (agglutination, postposing and free word order), and syntactic/semantic. O introduces Western studies on DMs, bringing in definitions and classifications of Japanese counterparts. This serves as an informative review for scholars and students of discourse/pragmatics.

In Ch. 3, O gives a detailed analysis of demo and dakedo (demo type connectives) for present-day Japanese (PDJ) conversations. O argues that the so-called adversative conjunctions demo and dakedo involve four different types of contrast. These expressions in PDJ mark the referential (i.e. those explicitly represented lexically) and pragmatically inferable contrasts. They also mark the contrast between functionally related portions of discourse, such as question/answer (functional contrast), and the contrast between actions revealed in the speaker-hearer exchanges (contrastive actions). Demo and dakedo are used in conversational discourse to help make the speaker's point or to claim the floor, also appearing when the speaker opens a conversation or changes the topic. O builds on Schiffrin's work (1987), enabling her to approach contrast, an abstract type of meaning, from multiple concrete perspectives. This analytical tool for demo type connectives (i.e. four types of contrast) is assumed to be related to the three functions of language mentioned in Ch. 1. When these conjunctions mark referential/pragmatically inferable contrasts, they are considered to have an ideational function. Functional contrast and contrastive actions seem to be related to textual and expressive functions of language, respectively (although O also notes that the relationship is not a one-to-one correspondence (85)). The fact that demo and dakedo show a variety of contrastive actions leads O to conclude that these conjunctions have pragmatic functions in PDJ.

Ch. 4 discusses the historical development of demo and dakedo. O argues that what were originally clause-final connecting devices, V-te + mo/V + kedo, have shifted to utterance/sentence-initial position, functioning as the unitary DMs demo and dakedo. These meaning changes follow the overall direction from ideational to textual and expressive functions, becoming more interaction-based. Therefore, the conjunction has undergone pragmaticalization. O further argues that the detachability and mobility of the subordinate clause due to frequent postposing in conversation and the predicate-replacement function of d in the verb da (and its –te gerundive form de) contribute to “the formation of the initial condensed subordinate clause-like word dakedo/demo” (207). Furthermore, the initial position is important for an item to gain expressive meaning, since the position for the “initiating bracket” frames the rest of the utterance within the speaker's stance, evaluation and orientation towards the interactional context (120).

The next two chapters focus on another type of DM, na elements. In Ch. 5, O agrees with previous studies that ‘to reach harmony’ is of primary importance in Japanese conversational management. She finds that ne and na, frequently used DMs, contribute to attaining this goal at various positions in an utterance (i.e., final, internal, initial positions) by working as markers of involvement (“positive politeness” in Brown and Levinson's 1987 terms). Specifically, O identifies several conversational functions of ne and na; marking agreement, calling the attention of the hearer before presenting new information, reinforcing the validity of information just presented, and calling attention by means of a summons, among others.

Ch. 6 examines the historical development of na and its variant forms into DMs. This pragmaticalization is accompanied by shifts in the position in which they occur. O demonstrates that sentence-final and internal elements first appear around the same time or successively (i.e., as particles), later occurring in initial position (i.e., as interjections). The meaning change of na elements differs from that of demo type connectives since the former has only the expressive function at the beginning and develops the textual function later. (The ideational function remains irrelevant in the case of na elements.) The pragmaticalization of na elements follows the hypothesized direction from less to more interaction-oriented, exhibiting a more specific change of ‘subjectification’ (e.g. Traugott 1989). Their function was to mark the speaker's exclamation (self-focus), only later changing to an ‘summons' (other-focus). The meaning shift is identified with the process of subjectification. Locally, the shift to a more interpersonal, communication-bound meaning is observed, both sentence-finally (exclamation > tag-like functions) and initially (summons > calling attention before new information/reinforcing agreement). O labels the development of these meanings at the local level “intersubjectification” as they are instances “where meanings come explicitly to index and acknowledge SP(speaker)/W(writer)’s attitude toward AD(addressee)/R(reader) in the here and now of the speech event (Traugott & Dasher 2002:31 cited in O, 189).” O further refers to studies by Kokugogaku (traditional Japanese linguistics) researchers arguing that Japanese is a postpositional language and the semantic content of a sentence occurs in the center and the speaker's subjective attitude toward the content appears at both ends. Therefore, O concludes that the na group of SFPs, which originally had a more interaction-oriented expressive function than other SFPs, underwent pragmaticalization to become initial DMs more readily.

In the final chapter, O argues that the development of demo type connectives demonstrates a clear case of grammaticalization, and that of na elements can be viewed as a case of grammaticalization only in the broadest sense (205). She discusses the relevance of her study to typological features of Japanese, the productive formational patterns of DMs, and finally to conventionalization of implicatures leading to an establishment of interactional meanings.

This book plays a significant role in the study of DMs in Japanese, a language typologically different from English, and also brings in examples from a substantial time range. O's work serves as a bridge between Schiffrin's work on English DMs and Traugott's proposals on meaning change. Second, it narrows the gap between Japanese Kokugogaku and linguistics in the international scene. Readers become acquainted with an extensive variety of important works published in Japanese, ranging from the history of modern Japanese to the mobility of elements (from final to initial-position in a sentence). Upgrading the analytical tools developed in today's linguistics, O also reveals that early observations made by Kokugogaku linguists are indeed useful in accounting for the pragmaticalization of the target items. Lastly, treating related forms as a group (i.e., forms containing d/n), rather than focusing on specific forms, enables O to capture the general historical path, making it easy to discuss motivations in both specific and global terms (i.e. grammatical/discourse and typological/social motivations).

Some points deserve more attention in future studies. Although the quantitative aspect of O's analysis is minimal, it would be helpful to consider token frequency: How many instances would be enough to judge that a certain pragmatic function has been conventionalized? How many functionally clear-cut cases and fuzzy (potentially transitional) cases were found?

In Ch. 6, O argues that the evolution of na elements supports subjectification and intersubjectification on two different levels, extensive and local. A parallel point can be made about demo type connectives. Recently, researchers have found a variety of non-final clauses (including temo/demo and kedo) without any main clause in the surrounding context (e.g. Okamoto 1995, Suzuki 1999, Ohori 2000, Higashiizumi 2006), causing the functional change of the clause-final subordinators/complementizers. Approaching those originally clause-final elements from the viewpoint of (inter-)subjectification seems possible.

Lastly, although O states that the positional shift of the items accompanying the pragmaticalization “can never be found in English” (211), Thompson and Mulac's study (1991) on epistemic parentheticals demonstrates the positional shift of items such as ‘I think’. O's study suggests that the cross-linguistic examination of positional shift of pragmatic markers at the utterance/clause periphery itself comprises a promising project.