Syntactic and Semantic Analysis of Negative Concord Phenomenon Based on Stacking of Focus Particles in Japanese

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K12393
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02060:Linguistics-related
• Research Institution: National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Ido Misato 大学共同利用機関法人人間文化研究機構国立国語研究所, 研究系, 特任助教 (20802606)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 現代日本語 / 否定極性 / とりたて詞 / 統語論 / 意味論

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aims to elucidate the syntactic and semantic structures of the negative concord phenomenon involving Japanese focus particles like "nanka ...NEG". In this research, I have advanced the descriptive analysis of the phenomenon where focus particles induce negative concord. Among these, some instances of negative concord with focus particles occur when there exists a certain relationship between the beliefs of the speaker and the context in which the focusing particle is employed within the sentence. This demonstrates that the co-occurrence with negative predicates in this phenomenon is merely a superficial tendency and emphasizes the necessity of observing these phenomena at the discourse level.

Free Research Field

言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

これまでの否定呼応現象は、単一文レベルの分析が中心であった。一方本研究の成果は、日本語のとりたて詞の否定呼応現象は単一文レベルで分析ではなく、より広範な要素の現象記述を必要とする文脈レベルでの分析が不可欠であることを示している。さらに、「なんか」などが用いられた文から感じられる話者の否定的評価の意味は、「前提」などの従来の意味分析概念では捉えることができず、これらの概念の再構築や別の意味概念の必要性を示している。