Classification of modality function and its application to Japanese language analysis

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis method for Japanese modality. In this purpose, meaning of Japanese modality is classified into four semantic categories and the role of it is formalized into five modality functions. Based on these formalizations, information and constraints to be applied to the modality analysis procedure are specified. Then by combining these investigations with case analysis, the analysis method is proposed. This analysis method has been applied to Japanese analysis for machine translation.