An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute: A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/ HTML Version(1997)

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II.2.5 Sentence Patterns in Spoken Japanese Part II- On Materials in Speech

(Report 23, 1963. 283 pages)
This research follows Part I (Report 18) and was based on such materials as lectures, addresses, congratulations, after-dinner speeches, and news comments on the radio. The basic methodology of this research was generally the same as that described in Report 18. However, the details of the methods were revised considerably. Especially the constructions were analyzed and described in detail. The points to be reported compared with Report 18 are as follows: 1. Construction- Components forming the kernels of sentences (predicates, subjects, compliments and objects) and components expanding the kernels (adverbial modifiers and others) were distinguished. Besides, independent components, modal modifiers and subordinate clauses were recognized as components of the construction. Various construction patterns consisting of these components were established. Namely, constructions were broadly divided into two classes: I) constructions consisting of independent components, and II) constructions with predicates as their nuclei. The latter were further classified into: 1) basic constructions (a. kernel constructions; b. expanded constructions; c. compound constructions) and 2) conjoined constructions. 2. Intonation- Intonations were classified into those expressing sentence moods placed at the ends of sentences and those expressing emphasis in some sense. Of the former class, two types of intonation were found: a rising tone ( ) and a falling tone (or non-rising tone) ( ). In the latter class, a high tone ( ) and a low tone ( ) were found. 3. Synthetic Sentence Patterns- Further studies of synthetic sentence patterns are expected in the future. Here a few problems of synthesis are pointed out and the prospects discussed. 4. Reference- As reference, previous studies of sentence patterns were surveyed. The persons in charge of this research were OISI Hatutaro~, MIYAZI Yutaka, MINAMI Huzio and SUZUKI Sigeyuki.

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