earticle

영어

This paper investigates the usage pattern of the elementary Japanese sentence pattern “to omou” in discussions in contact situations, and its effect on the conversation. In particular, the characteristics of Korean learners were analyzed in comparison with native Japanese speakers. The analysis revealed that although the usage frequency of “to omou” for the expression of opinions in conversations did not differ between learners and native speakers, learners tended to use the form “normal form + to omou / omoimasu” learned as a beginner’s sentence pattern. In addition, native speakers tended to use “to omou” accompanied by elements with the function to soften their argument before or after the word, whereas learners tended to add a sentence-ending particle immediately after “to omou” on its own. Observations of conversational examples confirmed that these utterances by learners sometimes contributed to smooth discussions, while at other times they were strong arguments against their conversational partners. Based on the above results, this paper made suggestions on how to improve the teaching of “to omou” in the educational field in the future.