談話文の構造分析 (I) 発達心理学的研究

Abstract

The studies of spoken language have so far been made mostly for the pre-school period. As for the language development in the school period, written compositions in stead of utterances have commonly been used as the data for an analysis. There is, however, a considerable difference between the structures of spoken and written forms in Japanese language, so the investigation of the structural development of the former should be extended for school children. The present study was aimed at a contribution to this area. A qualitative rather than quantitative approach was attempted chiefly to analyze the patterns of sentences frequently spoken among school children.Procedure: For the above purpose 30-40 consecutive remarks were recorded for preschool children, 4 years of age and school children in every other grade from 1 to 9. As for the data of adults, the journal, “Gengo-seikatsu”, was referred to. They are all utterances in the usual free talking situations (Su). To compare with these data, the utterances in a few serious situations (Ss) were collected, for example, those in studying or meeting situations in their classrooms, and the written sentences were also chosen from 10 elementary school readers. In this study the elements of sentences were defined as follows:1) Each block, “Bunsetsu” (Bst), in a sentence was taken as the unit of measuring the length of the sentence, as shown in the following examples:(1) Hana-ga saki-mashi-ta. (2-Bst sentence) [The flower opened.](2) Sonna mono-wa nai. (3-Bsts sentence) [There is not such a thing.](3) Ame-ga fu-tta-ra, yuki-mase-n. (3-Bst sentence) [If it rains, I won't go.]2) Each Bst has a particular role as a component of the sentence. According to its role, it is designated as B, A, t, y, d, a, A, t or y. These 9 designations mean respectively as follows (each approximate correspondence in English language being given in the parenthesis): B: Jutsugo-Bst (a predicate), A: Shugo-Bst (a subject), t: Rentaishushoku-Est (an adjective), y: Renyo ship shouu-Bst (an adverb), d: Dokuritsugo-Bst (an interjection, etc, ), a: Bst A in a dependent clause only, A, t, y: Bsts A, t, y respectively in an independent clause, while all Bst B in a dependent clause.Thus are substituted for a sentence. A sequence of these marks when adopted to the above-mentioned sentences, (1), (2), (3), they are as follows: (1)→AB, (2)→tAB, (3)→ayB. The first two are simple sentences, and third is complex. Sentence patterns can be classified in terms of such sequences of marks. B Bsts were further analysed in detail.Results: 1. The length of sentences in spoken language in Su is usually short (Table 1). Even in the case of adults, the mean length of sentences is 3.42 Bsts. And 2-Bst sentences are most frequent at all sage levels.2. The ratio of complex sentences to the total gradually increases with the age. It is 9.17 in the 4 year children while 25.06 in the adults.3. The patterns of frequently spoken sentences determined by the component arrangement are shown in Table 4 (simple sentences) and Table 5 (complex sentences). In these tables both and t Bsts were excluded, for they seldom modify B Bst. The order of sentence patterns is set from the 1st to the 3rd in terms of frequency of them. If the number of simple sentences is counted in eash order cumulatively, including the sentences of d Bst only and those of A Bst only, there are 5058, 5473 and 5566 sentences respectively. Their percentages of the total 5597 simple sentences are 90.42%, 97.78% and 99.45%, respectively (Table 4). Complex sentences were analyzed in the same way as shown in Table 5.4. And if these 20 simple and 23 complex sentence patterns are assumed as fundamental, 92% of all 6820 spoken sentences (Table 6) and 68% of all written sentences (Table 7) are to be included within these 43