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Part of
Information-Structural Perspectives on Discourse Particles
Edited by Pierre-Yves Modicom and Olivier Duplâtre
[Studies in Language Companion Series 213] 2020
► pp. 135–160

Chapter 5
Final or medial

Morphosyntactic and functional divergences in discourse particles of the same historical sources

| Fuji Women’s University
| Hokkaido University of Education

Some Japanese final particles find their origins in the same historical sources as interjectional (or medial) particles, with the former occurring in sentence-final position while the latter in sentence-medial position. The two types of particles, though identical in form, are less likely to be used in the same sentence. This study demonstrates that they developed along different pathways and acquired respectively unique discourse-pragmatic functions, mediated by the traits of the positions they occupy in sentences. Our research highlights three discourse-pragmatic functions: information status, addressee-directedness, and speaker gender. We argue that the final and interjectional particles of the same form do not co-occur in a single sentence when they show contrastive features in one of these functions.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A brief historical sketch of Japanese interjectional and final particles
  • 3.Morpho-syntactic differences between interjectional and final particles
  • 4.Discourse-pragmatic differences between interjectional and final particles
    • 4.1Information status
    • 4.2Addressee-directedness
    • 4.3Speaker gender
  • 5.Contrastive features of interjectional and final particles
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Keys to abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 4 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.213.05izu
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