「そして」と「それから」の意味分析 —日本語学習者の誤用の回避を目指して—

Abstract

Soshite and sorekara are representative “additive conjunctions.” These two conjunctions are said to encode similar meanings, as has been assumed in several dictionaries, and they are indeed interchangeable in some environments such as kyou-wa gozenchuu-ni ginkou-ni itte, soshite/sorekara gogo-wa daigaku-ni ikimasu (‘I go to a bank in the morning, and go to a university in the afternoon’). In other contexts, however, they are not interchangeable, displaying their inherent differences, as can be seen in the misuse of these conjunctions by the learners of Japanese; these errors include *futari-wa kekkon shimashita. Sorekara (→ soshite) shiawaseni kurashimasita (‘They got married. And they lived a happy life.’) and *koohii-o futatsu. Soshite (→ sorekara) chiizukeiki-o hitotsu kudasai (‘Two cups of coffee. And I’d like to take a slice of cheesecake.’). These differences between the two conjunctions have led some previous studies (including grammar books) to assume that the key concept is the successive relation between the preceding and the following clauses/sentences, claiming that sorekara emphasizes a temporal sequence while soshite emphasizes a relation with regard to a topic of the connected clauses/sentences. The notion of successive relation, however, is insufficient in explaining various types of grammatical errors made by the learners of Japanese. In this paper, I shall explore the semantic functions of sorekara and soshite, considering their parallelisms and differences from the perspective of how the speaker (as an utterer) construes an event through the use of these conjunctions.