現代日本語におけるハズダ文の意味構造 ―推論類型と意味機能間の相関関係―

Abstract

Epistemic modality in Japanese has been investigated in two ways: the description of semantic functions and the analysis, followed by the logical process of inference. These two separate approaches, however, need to be conducted in a comprehensive way to explain the semantic structure of hazuda, one of the epistemic modalities in Japanese. The comprehensive interpretation, as depicted in Figure 1, assumes that the speaker’s subjectivity is more likely to appear in hazuda sentences in the order of abduction, analogy, induction, and deduction. The analysis is conducted based on these four types of inference. The results show that even hazuda sentences in deduction can reflect a high degree of speaker's subjectivity where a major proposition addresses one’s personal values or beliefs. In terms of induction, a counterfactual conditional in hazuda sentences expresses a speaker’s negative conviction towards an individual event at the moment of utterance. Hazuda sentences in analogy and abduction have a suitable structure to show a speaker’s subjectivity by giving the most plausible examples to lead to a conclusion. To put it in a nut shell, the subjectivity within each and every type of inference leads hazuda to reflect the notion of semantic continuity in a sentence.