The Japanese Sentence Final Particles In Talk In Interaction

The Japanese sentence-final particles, "ne," "yo" and "yone" have proved notoriously difficult to explain and are especially challenging for second language users. This book investigates the role of the particles in talk-in-interaction with the aim of providing a comprehensive understanding that accounts for their pragmatic properties and sequential functions and that provides a sound basis for second language pedagogy. This study starts by setting up an original particle function hypothesis based on the figure/ground "gestalt," and then tests its validity empirically with unmarked, marked and native/non-native talk-in-interaction data. The analysis illustrates not only expectable but also unexpected or strategic use of particles, as well as the problems posed for native speakers by non-native speakers whose use of particles is idiosyncratic. The study demonstrates that the proposed hypothesis is capable of accounting for all the uses of particles in the extensive and varied data set examined. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in pragmatics and CA and to teachers of Japanese as a foreign language.

Observing naturally occurring talk-in-interaction in Japanese, this book examines how Japanese speakers segment their talk into relevant interactional units and use particles such as ne and sa to accomplish local pragmatic work. The study provides a conversation analytic, action-oriented account for the ubiquity of such particles in Japanese talk. The study argues that such particles are important resources for Japanese speakers to negotiate and fine-tune particular conversational contingencies within the emerging sequential environment of the talk. Various examples show that prospective alignment and the negotiability of conversational next action are ever-present issues for Japanese conversationalists and are handled at the precise moment of their relevance through interlocutors’ deployment of ne and sa. This study thus adds to the literature on Japanese conversational interaction a novel understanding of particle use in its synthesis of functional linguistics and conversation analysis.

This book explores the interpretation of grammar and turn-taking in Japanese talk-in-interaction from the perspective of conversation analysis. It pays special attention to the projectability patterns of turns in Japanese in comparison to English. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, it is shown that the postpositional grammatical structure and the predicate-final orientation in Japanese regularly result in a relatively delayed projectability of the possible point at which a current turn may become recognisably complete in comparison to English. Prior to such points, projectability is often limited to the progressive anticipation of small increments of talk. However, participants are able to achieve smooth speaker transitions with minimal gap or overlap through the use of specific grammatical and prosodic devices for marking possible points at which a transition may become relevant.

This volume brings together sixteen in-depth studies of final particles in various languages of the world, offering a rich variety of approaches to this still relatively underresearched class of elements. The volume is of interest to typologists, to experts in syntax and the analysis of spoken language, and to linguists studying the form and function of final particles in single languages. Final particles offers an overview of the different types of final particles found in typologically distinct languages, different methological approaches to the study of final particles, and of typical grammaticalization pathways that these elements have taken in different languages.

Questions and interrogatives in Japanese discourse have attracted considerable interest from grammarians, but the communicative aspect has received little attention. This book fills this gap. Through detailed analyses of formal and informal interactions, this book demonstrates that the inherent multi-functional and polysemous aspect of language can also be observed in the use of questions. What emerges is a sense of the considerable variety of question forms and also an understanding of how questions are used to perform a wide range of social actions. The importance of context is stressed throughout the book; both in guiding the speakers' choices of question types and in helping to create the particular stance that characterizes those interactions. The data used in this book shows that speakers prefer questions that are not canonical. When speakers do use canonical questions, these are overwhelmingly accompanied by some mollifiers. This phenomenon suggests that in Japanese communication the illocutionary force of canonical questions is too strong. To soften the interaction, speakers tend to use other types of interrogative forms such as statements with rising intonation or, at least, to leave questions grammatically unfinished. The findings in this book contribute to the understanding of how Japanese speakers use questions in different communicative interactions and provide new evidence of the gap between prescriptive grammar and actual communication.

Responding to evolving challenges toward achieving gender equality and social inclusion. 30-31 August 2021, Indonesia. This event, organized by Pusat Studi Gender, Anak, dan Keluarga (PPGAK) ‘The Center of Gender, Children, and Family Studies’ Universitas Andalas aims to promote new insights and discussion about the current global perspectives, considering the differences in academic and subject fields’ approaches across time, countries, and economic sectors, with its implications and to improve and share the scientific knowledge on gender research. Is meant to open our horizon that the issue of gender and social inclusion may be viewed from various disciplines and perspectives. This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 1st International Conference in Gender, Culture and Society, held online from Padang, Indonesia, August 30-31, 2021. The 85 revised full papers were carefully selected from 124 submissions. The papers are organized thematically in gender, culture and society. The papers present a wide range of insights and discussion about the current global perspectives on gender research.

The book provides a new angle for the study of otherwise amply discussed discourse and interactional phenomena. The new perspective consists in addressing the interconnections between resonance, stance, represented discourse and joking in Mexican conversational discourse. In so doing, it contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between collaboration, intersubjectivity and emergence, among other relevant issues. Scholars and advanced students concerned with dialogic syntax theory, stance theory and Spanish, will find the present analysis interesting and innovative. However, the writing and methodology, based on clearly discussed and presented examples from selected conversational excerpts, including graphic representations of linguistic and discourse data, makes the analysis easy to follow also to non-specialists. The book is thus interesting to a broad circle of readers, whether they are concerned with any of the issues dealt with or with their mutual connections, whether they are specialists or not.

This book is dedicated to Anna Wierzbicka, one of the most influential and innovative linguists of her generation. Her work spans a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural psychology, cognitive science, philosophy and religious studies, as well as her home base of linguistics. She is best known for the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to meaning—a versatile tool for exploring ‘big questions’ concerning the diversity and universals of people’s experience in the world. In this volume, Anna Wierzbicka’s former students, old and current colleagues, ‘kindred spirits’ and ‘sparring partners’ engage with her ideas and diverse body of work. These authors cover topics from the grammar of action verbs to cross-cultural pragmatics, and over 30 languages from around the world are represented. The chapters in Part 1 focus on the NSM approach and cover four themes: lexico-grammatical semantics, cultural keywords, semantics of nouns, and emotion. In Part 2, the contributors connect with a meaning-based approach from their own intellectual perspectives, including syntax, anthropology, cognitive linguistics and sociolinguistics. The deep humanistic perspective, wide-ranging themes and interdisciplinary nature of Wierzbicka’s research are reflected in the contributions. The common thread running through all chapters is the primacy of meaning to the understanding of language and culture.