英文摘要 |
This paper examined the use of a sentence-final particle ''wa'' using Japanese Corpora. The data show that many women use ''wa'' and more than a half of men use ''wa'' in their utterances. ''Wa'' with a falling intonation rather than a rising intonation was frequently used in the corpus. ''Wa'' has a meaning of expressing speaker's real feelings and ideas freely not directly toward listeners. It is concluded that ''wa'' with such a characteristic is going to be often used in the future, too. |