earticle

영어

This paper studies the meaning and function of "inflection-type" negative questions in Japanese. Analysis results are as follows. (1)From the perspective of the ‘bias’, "inflection-type" negative questions are subdivided into ‘neutral "inflection-type" negative questions’ and ‘biased "inflection-type" negative questions’. and the latter type are subdivided into ‘biased analytic negative questions’ and ‘biased unanalytic negative questions’. (2)‘Biased analytic negative questions’ and ‘biased unanalytic negative questions’ are different in the judgement state of the speaker. The former is in the judgement state that the speaker suspend judgement of truth about the proposition and the latter is in the judgement state that the speaker give a jugdement of truth about the proposition, though the result of the judgement is uncertain. (3)According to the result of comparison with the confirmation requests of NE and DAROU, ‘biased "inflection-type" negative questions’ have ‘the questioning characteristics’ and ‘the characteristics of settling the judgement’ in common and are subdivided into ‘the request of confirmation’ and ‘the request of consent’. Consequently ‘biased "inflection-type" negative questions’ can be positioned to the confirmation requests.