Abstract
A systematic investigation into the first large scale Japanese conversation corpus reveals that repeated verbs (RVs) occurring in the response position tend to involve frequently used verbs such as aru ‘to exist’ and chigau ‘to differ’ (e.g., aru aru aru). Further, longer RVs, those involving more repetition, are even more likely to occur with frequent verbs. In RVs, we find the verb having lost some of its lexical meaning and phonological substance (e.g., chigau > chiga). RVs in fact behave more like pragmatic particles functioning as reactive tokens, i.e., short responses interjected by non-main speakers. RVs as reactive tokens are most clearly observed when they are used together with standard reactive tokens such as hai hai hai hai ‘yes, yes, yes, yes’, so(o) so(o) so(o) ‘yes, yes, yes’, and (i)ya (i)ya (i)ya ‘no, no, no’, which also exhibit repetition and phonological reduction. Verb repetition is thus better understood as a template to turn verbs into reactive tokens.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Mike Ewing, Ruth Fallon and Reijirou Shibasaki for their insightful comments on the earlier versions, and the audience in our presentations for their invaluable input in the process of writing this paper. This study has been supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research 17KT0061) and the Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Fellowship, awarded to Suzuki and Ono respectively. All remaining errors are our responsibility.
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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