Sequential patterns of storytelling using omotte in Japanese conversation
-
Maki Shimotani
and
Tomoko Endo
Abstract
In the literature of Japanese linguistics, the verb omou ‘to think’ has been extensively studied in terms of epistemic modality and analyzed as an expression of the speaker’s opinion specifically at a sentential level. However, through examining the data of storytelling in everyday conversation, we found that this verb rarely occurs in the non-past predicate form omou. Instead, it occurs in a connective -te form, i.e., omotte. Unlike omou, uses of omotte in storytelling sequences rarely indicate the speaker’s opinion. Rather, it shows a quotation of his or her thought evoked during an event or in telling a story; it also plays a significant role in managing larger units of talk. This study, within the framework of interactional linguistics (e.g., Ochs, Schegloff, & Thompson, 1996), focuses on the form omotte and investigates how it is used as a linguistic resource to manage the organization of a story.
© 2017 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Contents
- Extended discourse in first and second language acquisition: A challenge and an opportunity
- Japanese compliment discourse: The process of collaborative construction
- Sequential patterns of storytelling using omotte in Japanese conversation
- A corpus-based analysis of the paradigmatic development of semi-polite verbs in Chinese and Korean learners of Japanese
- Language learners’ use of non-turn-final ne
- A role for “air writing” in second-language learners’ acquisition of Japanese in the age of the word processor
- On expressions of agent de-topicalized intentional events: A contrastive study between Japanese and Russian
Articles in the same Issue
- Contents
- Extended discourse in first and second language acquisition: A challenge and an opportunity
- Japanese compliment discourse: The process of collaborative construction
- Sequential patterns of storytelling using omotte in Japanese conversation
- A corpus-based analysis of the paradigmatic development of semi-polite verbs in Chinese and Korean learners of Japanese
- Language learners’ use of non-turn-final ne
- A role for “air writing” in second-language learners’ acquisition of Japanese in the age of the word processor
- On expressions of agent de-topicalized intentional events: A contrastive study between Japanese and Russian
