機能語トの扱いからみた日本語教育における関連表現

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify what morphological unit is appropriate to make a set of related expressions to be classified into a same linguistic feature category in the Japanese󰠏language education through an analysis of a function word “to.” The study focused on the linguistic feature categories of related expressions in the native spoken Japanese and clarified what morphological/grammatical unit can actually be the “related expressions” for the learners, as opposed to the current education practice. The current trend in the education originates in how “to” is treated in Japanese linguistics: grouping related expressions by extracting a sentence with “to” from a text, segregating the sentence into words, and categorizing with its related expressions which only belongs to the same morphological unit and lexical category. Through this process, any context in the original text is removed. To find how the class can teach “to” and its related expressions to meet the actual needs, this study observed how “to” conditionals and its related expressions are used in the spoken Japanese based on 730 simulated narratives which are extracted from Japanese comic books. By analyzing “to” of each narrative, the research found that the related expressions’ linguistic feature category differs depending on if the sentence is intended to urge the counterpart. The morphological unit of “to’s” related expressions with no intention of provoking/pressuring is word, while the expressions with urging intention required wider variety: from word to sentence. Above results proves that the related expressions in Japanese󰠏language education does not necessarily be the collection of words of the same morphological/lexical category, but it should be from wider category, varied from word to sentence which has similar pragmatic implication. In conclusion, the related expressions in Japanese󰠏language education should be discussed separately from those of Japanese linguistics. Therefore, the discussion requires a broader perspective on how the educational related expressions should be extracted, not limiting to the narrow linguistic definition, to be leveraged to the practical learning experience.