This study discusses the sentence type determination of '-ji' realized in a falling boundary tone but capable of performing the question. It also discusses the discrepancy between the form and speech acts revealed in such sentences. Since '-ji' is a p...
This study discusses the sentence type determination of '-ji' realized in a falling boundary tone but capable of performing the question. It also discusses the discrepancy between the form and speech acts revealed in such sentences. Since '-ji' is a polysemous ending, it is marked as interrogative by its rising intonation. It raises the question of whether it should be considered a 'declarative' based on form or an 'interrogative' based on speech act. In this discussion, we have considered these '-ji' statement to be the declarative sentences, which is a case where there is a mismatch between the form and speech act. In this study, this phenomenon is discussed from the perspective of 'pseudo-interrogative sentences'. A pseudo-interrogative sentence is a discourse phenomenon that occurs when a speaker uses H% or !L% intonation to elicit a response from a listener by some endings conveying grammatical meanings related to the hearear’s information structure and speaker’s knowledge state. In the case of '-ji', it is the same as other pseudo-interrogative sentences in terms of information structure and intonation, but due to the meaning of [already known], it can be said that it is a type that functions differently from other endings to request confirmation or agreement on the fact that the speaker already knows.