A Systemic Study of the Modality of Japanese

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02581
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics
• Research Institution: Ryukoku University
• Principal Investigator: Kadooka Kenichi 龍谷大学, 経営学部, 教授 (70278505)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 五十嵐 海理 龍谷大学, 社会学部, 教授 (30329338) ; 福田 一雄 新潟大学, 人文社会・教育科学系, 教授 (80143741) ; 飯村 龍一 玉川大学, 経営学部, 教授 (80266246) ; 加藤 澄 青森中央学院大学, 経営法学部, 教授 (80311504)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: モダリティ / 選択体系機能言語学 / モーダライゼイション / モデュレイション

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The main purpose of this paper is to contrast the definitions of the modality systems of English and Japanese. Since the definitions and the subclassifications of modality are different from one researcher to another, the descriptions depend on the framework. In this paper, the Systemic Functional framework is adopted as the main one that the modality system does is to construe the region of uncertainty that lies between ‘yes’ and ‘no.’
Another way of the definition is from Lyons (1977: 452): the purpose of the use of the modality expressions is to express, parenthetically, speaker’s opinion or attitude towards the proposition that the sentence expresses or the situation that the proposition describes.

Free Research Field

言語学