Formulaicity of fictional quotative ga itteta and its functions in Japanese social media posts
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Tomoyuki Tsuchiya
Abstract
Relatively longer formulaic sequences are often subject to syntactic, lexical, and semantic variability, and this variability presumably connects to the development of constructional schemata and to language creativity. The present paper focuses on the formulaicity, variation, and communicative effects of the quotative phrase X ga itteta ‘X was saying’ in Japanese social media posts, whose situation would become fictional or less factual depending on the nature of the subject X. Twitter data suggest that X ga itteta with certain subjects (e.g., high school girls, cats, moms; see below) is more conventionalized compared to the counterpart Y-tte itteta ‘was saying that Y’, where Y is a quoted statement, with the same subject. Additionally, the construction accepts variation of surrounding elements to raise its fictional level. In Japanese online platforms, the schema X ga itteta and its formulaic instances possibly distance the quoter from the quoted statement and avoid arguments and criticisms.
Acknowledgements
The research for this paper was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grants #17K17943 and #17KT0061.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Editors’ Notes
- Guest Editor’s notes
- Articles
- Formulaicity and formulaic expressions in Japanese: an introduction
- Formulaicity and contexts: a multimodal analysis of the Japanese utterance-final tteyuu
- Sequential positions and interactional functions of negative epistemic constructions in Japanese conversation
- Kedo-ending turn format as a formula for a problem statement with a deontic implication
- The utterance-final tari site construction in interaction: a general extender as a play stance marker
- Verb repetition as a template for reactive tokens in Japanese everyday talk
- Formulaicity of fictional quotative ga itteta and its functions in Japanese social media posts
- Commas as a constructional resource: the use of a comma in a formulaic expression in Japanese social media texts
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Editors’ Notes
- Guest Editor’s notes
- Articles
- Formulaicity and formulaic expressions in Japanese: an introduction
- Formulaicity and contexts: a multimodal analysis of the Japanese utterance-final tteyuu
- Sequential positions and interactional functions of negative epistemic constructions in Japanese conversation
- Kedo-ending turn format as a formula for a problem statement with a deontic implication
- The utterance-final tari site construction in interaction: a general extender as a play stance marker
- Verb repetition as a template for reactive tokens in Japanese everyday talk
- Formulaicity of fictional quotative ga itteta and its functions in Japanese social media posts
- Commas as a constructional resource: the use of a comma in a formulaic expression in Japanese social media texts
