中国語・英語母語話者による日本語フィラー使用の比較分析

要旨

In communication education, the communicative competence is emphasized, and the importance of fillers is pointed out in previous studies. Unlike Japanese L1 speakers, Japanese learners cannot use fillers as will, and there are cases in which they use their own native language in Japanese conversations. Studies on fillers have been mostly conducted using qualitative methods such as conversation analysis and discourse analysis, or the analysis of speech and functions of Japanese fillers rather than using quantitative methods. In the language acquisition process, the native language plays an important role in various aspects. It is thought that the native language is an element which affects the use of fillers by the Japanese learners. To ultimately clarify the effect of the native language, it is necessary to analyze the use of fillers by different L1 speakers group. In this study, we had a contrastive analysis of Japanese fillers by Chinese and English L1 speakers using the I-JAS corpus, and eight types of fillers, such as “vowel-type,” “vague-vowel-type,” “eto-type,” “kosoa-type,” “nanka-type,” “nn-type,” “ma-type” and “kousou-type” were considered. The results revealed that, regardless of the native language, in their conversations, all the intermediate learners used vowel-type fillers which were also used most frequently. In contrast, the nanka-type, vague-vowel-type, ma-type and kousou-type fillers showed the low frequency in both groups. As for the differences, a statistically significant difference was observed between the two groups in the use of kosoa-type, nn-type, and eto-type fillers. The kosoa-type and eto-type fillers were used more frequently by English L1 speakers while the nn-type fillers were used more often by Chinese L1 speakers. These findings suggest several future study directions. First, it is necessary to have qualitative analyses focused on the kosoa-type, nn-type and etotype fillers. In addition, to investigate the effect of the native language, not only Chinese and English L1 speakers, the analysis of fillers by other L1 speakers is needed.

主題