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Thus the deictic behavior--or which one to choose when--is quite predictable even when their referents are abstract: use kore when the information falls into the speaker's domain of control, use sore when the speaker asserts that the object falls within the addressee's domain, and use ano when the object belongs to the common, mutually shared domain of information.
Handling New Information
Some grammar patterns in Japanese are exclusively used when the speaker knows or assumes the addressee does not share the same information. Making a telephone call to an office for the first time or to an office where the caller is not immediately recognized is phrased in the way shown in sentence 5, not sentence 6:
5. Nagasawa to iu mono desu ga...
My name is Nagasawa... (or I am the person called Nagasawa)
6. *Nagasawa desu ga...
*I am Nagasawa (or My name is Nagasawa)...
Sentence 5 in essence says "(I assume you do not know me but) my name is Nagasawa," while sentence 6 may be paraphrased as "I am Nagasawa (and I assume you recognize my voice)." The reason is that in Japanese the speaker must be vigilant whether or not this information (that is, the caller's identity) is shared information between the speaker and the addressee or information that is (or assumed to be) new to the addressee. If the speaker knows or assumes that the addressee does not know (about) Nagasawa, she must use the form in example 5. On, by the same token, if a man calls home and identifies himself like sentence 5 above will be considered odd or humorous.
Access to Information
The distinction Japanese makes about information's domain is as interesting as language's sensitivity to another distinction that is habitually made about who has direct access to information. In English, it seems patently clear that sentences likes "I am sad" and "Hanna is sad" share a common structure, that is, "X BE Y." And once this structure is learned, it is easy to apply it to any number of situations by filling the places marked by X and Y with the appropriate word. Thus we obtain "John is sad," "My dad is hungry," "You are carnivorous," et cetera. This simple paradigmatic substitution happens not to work in Japanese. There, predicates describing psychological and physical states (and "be sad" is one of them) appears most often with the first person subject and seldom with other subject types. The distinction on the accessibility of information is not as clearly marked in English in grammar as it is in Japanese, in which this type of encoding is strictly observed. The same can be said about one's physical state. So, if Alissa is stating that she is hungry, she'd say 8a or 8b:
8. a: Onaka ga suita
b: Onaka ga suite iru
I am hungry.
but if she is saying someone else, say Bop, is hungry, she'd say, for instance,
9. a: Onaka ga suite iru yō da
b: Onaka ga suite iru mitai
He is (lit. appears to be) hungry.
where yō da or mitai is added in order to indicate that she is making an observation about someone else's physical state, that that person is hungry, from the way he behaves.
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