Distinct functions of quotative markers: Evidence from Meidai Kaiwa Corpus

Abstract

Preprint of article appearing in Gengo Bunka Ronshū 35, 2013The Japanese particle 'to' serves as a quotative marker, either indicating the content of quoted speech or thought, or serving related functions. The particle 'tte' is frequently identified as an informal variant of 'to', serving identical or nearly identical functions in casual speech. Analysis of a collection of 129 informal conversations shows a clear but non-categorical tendency for the particle 'tte' to appear with verbs of speech, or at the ends of utterances with no following verb, and for the particle 'to' to appear with verbs of cognition. This tends to support earlier work based on speaker intuitions.