1989 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Theoretical and Empirical Study of Context-Sensitivity of Japanese
| Project/Area Number |
63301065
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Co-operative Research (A)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
言語学(含音声学)
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| Research Institution | Kobe University |
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Principal Investigator |
NISHIMITSU Yoshihiro Kobe Univ., College of Liberal Arts, Associate Professor, 教養部, 助教授 (10031361)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
KINSUI Satoshi Osaka Women's College, School of Letters, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (70153260)
KIMURA Hideki Kobe Univ., College of Liberal Arts, Associate Professor, 教養部, 助教授 (20153207)
HAYASHI Hiroshi Osaka University of Foreign Studies, Associate Professor, 外国語学科, 助教授 (40135819)
TAKUBO Yukinori Kobe Univ., College of Liberal Arts, Associate Professor, 教養部, 助教授 (10154957)
SHIBATANI Masayoshi Kobe Univ., School of Letters, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (60127371)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1988 – 1989
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| Keywords | Features of Japanese / Contrastive Linguistics / Context-Sensitivity / Japanese Linguistics / Linguistic Typology / Third Person Pronouns / Discourse Structure / Modality |
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| Research Abstract |
We shall first outline the research results of each researcher, and then make overall theoretical points. Nishimitsu showed that Japanese discourse structures are more repetitive than that of English and that Japanese allows more ambiguity in various phenomena than English and made theoretical deliberations, in- voking acute context-sensitive nature of Japanese as an explanation. Shibatani criticized recent proposals on principles-and-parameters approach to syntactic differences between English and Japanese, showing that some of the attributed correlations are not empirically sound, citing a number of exceptions to the al- leged correlations from various languages of the world. He also delineated the position of Japanese passive constructions in the general typological system of passive construction of the world's languages. Takubo developed a general theory of context in linguistics and provided our research team a convenient theoretical tool. Takubo and Kimura made a contrastive stud
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y of third person pronouns in Chinese, Japanese, English and French, and showed that Japanese third person pronouns are not fully developed. Masuoka proposed a functional explanation of the subtle and hard-to-explicate construction of "noda" in Japanese. Hayashi made a detailed contrastive study of detached constructions in Japanese, French and Rumanian. Kinsui made a detailed account of demonstratives and multi-stratified predicates in Japanese discourse. Takubo, Masuoka and Kinsui shedlight on various facets of modality in Japanese. Nakagawa showed that Chinese is located between English and Japanese in terms of the degree of context-sensitivity.
Thus our initial research objective of showng the high degree of context-sensitivity of Japanese has been achieved to a certain extent in a number of phenomena in a set of languages under investigation, giving us rough ideas about the relativized value of context-sensitivity parameter to be assigned to those languages. A number of research areas for the future surfaced as a result, such as conversational strategy, discourse structure and pragmatics. Also a general theory of context and a modelling theory of context-sensitivity are gradually showing its overall structure. Less
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