This study explores the Japanese particle nanka, which is one of the most frequently occurring words in the Japanese language. In Japanese grammar, nanka literally means “some, any, something, or anything” (Daijirin... [ view full abstract ]
This study explores the Japanese particle nanka, which is one of the most frequently occurring words in the Japanese language. In Japanese grammar, nanka literally means “some, any, something, or anything” (Daijirin 1995). The latest research suggests that nanka works as a filler meaning “like” or “well,” and that it shows the speaker’s uncertainty and vagueness (Lauwereyns 2002; Heffernan 2012). However, nanka is not simply used as a filler. In this study, by focusing on self-disclosure, a process of communication in which one person reveals information about oneself to another, nanka is analyzed from the point of view as a function in communication.
The data used in this study is collected from “Mister O Corpus,” a cross-linguistic video corpus about conversations. 26 pairs of female participants talk about the topic, “what surprised you most?” for about five minutes. This data includes 395 examples of nanka, and these examples are analyzed based on co-occurrence expressions.
Most examples reveal that nanka works as a marker to introduce “new information (Chafe 1994)” and spontaneous expressions such as speakers’ inner speech, onomatopoeia, and citing third party utterances. In addition, nanka shows a variety of speakers’ meanings such as hesitation and uncertainty, depending on the context, because these spontaneous expressions that nanka introduces are not necessarily accurate. Therefore, the speaker tends to show her concern over whether her own speech meets the requirements of the task or satisfies the listener by using nanka. Consequently, nanka, which has been depicted as a mere filler, introduces on-going interactions and works as a cue to show the speaker’s cognitive mood to the listener in social interactions.
References
Chafe, Wallace. 1994. Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: the Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. The University of Chicago Press.
Heffernan, Kevin. 2012. Similarities in the syntactic development of two discourse markers: Japanese nanka and English like. Kwansei Gakuin University Humanities Review 17. 147-157.
Lauwereyns, Shizuka. 2002. Hedges in Japanese conversation: the influence of age, sex, and formality. Language Variation and Change 14. 239-259.
Matsumura, Akira (ed.) 1995. Daijirin. Second Edition. Tokyo: Sanseido.
