Japanese <i>unnun</i> as a meta-discourse placeholder

Abstract Previous studies have described a range of placeholder (PH) items. A PH fills in the grammatical slot of a target that a speaker is unable or unwilling to produce. This paper argues that Japanese unnun , an expression wholly underdescribed in the literature, serves as a PH and that it may also be used as a general extender (GE). Unlike previously known PHs, unnun is regarded as a ‘meta-discourse’ PH; it replaces a discourse segment, rather than a linguistic form. I develop a cognitive-pragmatic account in Relevance theory, arguing that unnun encodes procedural meaning and that the PH and GE functions emerge through interaction among encoded meaning, pragmatic principles, and contextual assumptions. Further, the account situates unnun in the broader picture of vague language in a theoretically coherent manner. I also suggest that some of the previously described PHs in other languages may be re-classified as meta-discourse PHs.