推測のモダリティ副詞「たぶん」「おそらく」「さぞ」 「おおかた」についての一考察-文の事態内容に対する話し手の認識的判断と話し手情報の観点から-

Abstract

In this paper, I put forth an analysis of Japanese guess adverbs “tabun”, “osoraku”, “sazo” and “ookata” with respect to the contextual information and the speaker’s background information. It is shown, as stated below, that the four adverbs have gradations of meaning depending on the levels of the speaker’s information. 1) “Tabun” co-occurs almost 50% of the time with the sentence ending form of the "darou" type, and is more often used where there is not the speaker’s information based on contextual evidence (about 75%) rather than where there is (about 25%). “Tabun” can be used in any stage of judgment, from the cases directly related to the speaker himself to the cases that can only be understood using their imagination or assumption, and suggests the speaker’s will, assertion and guess. 2) “Osoraku” co-occurs almost 60% of the time with the sentence ending form of the "darou" type, and is more often used where there is not the speaker’s information based on contextual evidence (about 67%) rather than where there is (about 33%). “Osoraku” can be used in any stage of judgment, from the cases directly related to the speaker himself to the cases that can only be understood using their imagination or assumption, and suggests the speaker’s will, plan, conviction and guess. 3) “Sazo” co-occurs almost 94% of the time with the sentence ending form of the "darou" type, and is more often used where there is not the speaker’s information based on contextual evidence (about 60%) rather than where there is (about 40%). “Sazo” can be used in both the cases that can be related to the feelings of the listener (52% (26/50)) and the cases that can not be related to the feelings of the listener (48% (24/50)), and suggests the meaning of empathy and guessing, regardless of the presence or absence of the speaker’s information. 4) “Ookata” co-occurs almost 90% of the time with the sentence ending form of the "darou" type, and is more often used where there is not the speaker’s information based on contextual evidence (about 53%) rather than where there is (about 47%). In the context that is not directly related to the speaker or listener, “ookata” mainly has the meaning of guessing in the form of “ookata～darou”.