Discourse-pragmatic variation and change in contact varieties of languages: A cross-linguistic perspective

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25580085
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: MATSUMOTO Kazuko 東京大学, 総合文化研究科, 准教授 (80350239)
• Research Collaborator: BRITAIN David ベルン大学, 英語英文学部, 教授
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: しょ / パラオ日本語 / postcolonial Japanese / contact Japanese variety / Palauan Japanese / sho / discourse marker / tag

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research project aims to explore similarities in discourse-pragmatic variation and change in contact varieties of languages from a cross-linguistic perspective. We have been investigating (a) to what extent the functional distributions and social stratifications of the tags, daro, desho and sho in Palauan Japanese are similar to those of eh and HRTs in NZ and AU English; (b) if there is a similar trajectory in the grammaticalization process between Palauan ollei and English dude.
Our findings have made theoretical contributions to the field of contact sociolinguistics; leading to a better understanding of (a) the common process of grammaticalization of address terms across different contact varieties, (b) the broader applicability of the concept of ‘vernacular universals’ (Chambers 2000) beyond phonological and morphosyntactic levels, as well as (c) the usefulness of the Dynamic Model (Schneider 2007) to identify different stages of formation of Palauan English.

Free Research Field

社会言語学