A Comprehensive Description of Interrogative Sentences in the Northern Amami Dialects

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K13193
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02060:Linguistics-related
• Research Institution: Hiroshima University (2021-2023); Shigakukan University (2019-2020)
• Principal Investigator: Shirata Rihito 広島大学, 人間社会科学研究科(教), 准教授 (60773306)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 疑問文 / 琉球諸語 / 奄美語 / 文法記述 / 言語行為 / 埋め込み疑問文 / プロソディー / 確認要求

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study provides a description of interrogative sentences in the northern dialects of Amami. The main findings include the differences in sentence-final markers depending on whether the proposition of the sentence is related to the action the speaker intends to perform, the variation in embedding markers based on the scope of the question focus or the part of speech of the predicate, the interaction between the sentence-final intonation and the prosodic features of the predicate, and the characteristics of sentence-final forms derived from imperative forms of visual verbs used in confirmation requests.

Free Research Field

言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

奄美北部諸方言の疑問文についてはこれまで詳細な記述はなされてこなかった。本研究は、疑問文の担う言語行為がどのように形式的に区別されるか、日本語学において疑問文の下位に位置づけられてきた確認要求文にどのようなムードに由来する文末形式が用いられるうるか、といった点について、新たな知見を示しており、特に日琉諸語の他の地域変種の疑問文の研究を促進するものといえる。