Modal and Speech-Act Constraints on Clause-Linkage
| Project leader | : | TSUNODA Tasaku |
|---|---|---|
| Research field | : | linguistics |
| Keywords | : | clause-linkage; modal constraints; speech-act constraints |
Summary
Consider the following Japanese sentences, which contain the clause-linkage marker =kara 'causal'.
| (1) | Ame=ga hut-ta=kara, ensoku=ga tyuusi=ni nat-ta. 'Because it rained, the picnic was cancelled.' |
| (2) |
Miti=ga kon-de i-ta=kara, ziko=de=mo at-ta=no=daroo. Literal translation: 'Because the road was crowded, an accident or something may have happened.' Intended meaning: 'Because the road was crowded, I GUESS/SUPPOSE that an accident or something may have happened.' |
In (1), the subordinate clause 'it rained' expresses the cause of the consequence shown by the main clause 'the picnic was cancelled'. However, the situation is different in (2). The subordinate clause 'the road was crowded' does not denote a cause of the main clause 'an accident or something may have happened'. Rather, the subordinate clause presents a premise on the basis of which the judgment 'an accident or something may have happened' is stated. That is, (2) is more easily interpretable if 'I GUESS/SUPPOSE THAT' is supplied.
As these examples show, the relationship between the subordinate clause and the main clause is not necessarily the same even where one and the same clause-linkage marker is employed. The relationship may differ in terms of modal and speech-act aspects.
The present joint research mainly looks at languages of Asia, the Pacific and the Pacific Rim, and investigates issues such as the following, among others.
(a) What and how many types are there in terms of modal and speech-act constraints on clause-linkage?
(b) Do these constraints -- if they exist at all -- exhibit any geographical distribution?
- Core Research Projects
- Phonological Characteristics of the Japanese Lexicon
- Syntactic, Semantic, and Morphological Characteristics of the Japanese Lexicon
- Modeling of the Ecology of Writing and its Application to Sociolinguistics
- The Japanese Lexicon: A Rendaku Encyclopedia
- General Study for Research and Conservation on Endangered Dialects in Japan
- Field Research Project to Analyze the Formation Process of Japanese Dialects
- Exploring the Variation in the Contemporary Japanese: Multiple Approaches
- Formation Processes of Japanese Language Varieties and Creoles
- Basic Research on Corpus Annotation
- Design of a Diachronic Corpus
- Foundation of Corpus Japanese Linguistics
- Adnominal Clauses and the Noun-Concluding Construction: Grammaticalization of Nouns
- Modal and Speech-Act Constraints on Clause-Linkage
- Universals and Cross-Linguistic Variations in the Semantic Structure of Predicates
- Study on Teaching and Learning Japanese as a Second Language in a Multicultural Society
- Core Research Projects
- Original/Developing-Type
- Incubation/Discovery-Type
