Prosody of German Modal Particles and Japanese Sentence-Final Particles in Attitude Utterances

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520441
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Ikoma Miki 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 教授 (90350404)
• Research Collaborator: USHIYAMA Saori 東京藝術大学, 音楽学部, 非常勤講師
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ドイツ語 / 心態詞 / 韻律的特徴 / 音声 / 終助詞 / 話し言葉

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In German, modal particles are usually used to express speakers' intentions, whereas in Japanese the same function is often performed by sentence-final particles. This study investigated the universal and language-specific prosodic features of German modal particles conveying speakers' attitudes, such as "refutation", uttered by both native German speakers and Japanese learners of German, and sentence-final particles in similar-meaning Japanese utterances spoken by native Japanese speakers.
There were common prosodic characteristics for the German modal particles expressing "refutation", but each of these modal particles also had other, different characteristics. These common prosodic characteristics were also partially observed in the Japanese sentence-final particles.

Free Research Field

言語学、音声学、ドイツ語教育