Undirected/Directed-Utterance Sequences in Japanese, Korean, and English: A Contrastive Analysis

要旨

<p>This study explores morphosyntactic variations in monologic speech across Japanese, Korean, and English, with particular focus on shifts from monologic to other-directed utterances. From typological and grammatical perspectives, Japanese and Korean are generally considered to be more analogous to each other than to English. Nevertheless, Japanese exhibits a notable contrast with both Korean and English in employing prepatterned or prefabricated expressions in monologic speech, which are distinct from those employed in corresponding interactional contexts. This divergence aligns with another cross-linguistic pattern: in utterances expressing self-blame or self-encouragement, Japanese generally disallows second-person pronouns to refer to the monologic speaker, whereas both Korean and English readily permit such self-reference. These findings suggest that Japanese can be best characterized as inherently distinguishing between monologic speech (i.e., undirected and self-directed) and other-directed speech (i.e., dialogic or interactive) and requiring speakers to adopt distinct morphosyntactic prepatterned or prefabricated expressions accordingly.</p>