Intonaatio lausuman lopettamisen ja jatkamisen merkkinä japanin- ja suomenkielisessä arkikeskustelussa Intonational indexing for ending or continuing “sentences” in Finnish and Japanese everyday conversation

The purpose of our proposed bilateral research project is to investigate how speakers of Finnish and Japanese use intonational cues to
indicate to their addressees that they will continue their current utterance or that they are done so that other participants can start
speaking. Such marking helps forestall the possibility of more than one participant talking at the same time, in overlap. We will examine
audio- and video-recorded everyday conversations from extensive corpora in each language, identifying commonalities and divergencies
in the use of such intonational cues in these genetically, areally and typologically distinct non-Indo-European languages. We focus on socalled
“neverending sentences”, long stretches of talk by one speaker linking together numerous units such as clauses, often combined in
ways not recognized in standard grammars, before they finally come to the end of the utterance (Auer 1991). We examine the interplay
between intonational characteristics, grammatical structure, and the action accomplished in such utterances using the method of
Interactional Linguistics. The proposed collaboration is a continuation of our ongoing joint research into the grammar of everyday talk.
Our research will fill a clear gap in the understanding of intonation in the projection of turn continuation or closing, an especially underresearched
feature in non-Indo-European languages, and thus holds the promise of significant new results in the understanding of the
grammar of spoken everyday interaction.
APPLICATION 355766 PAGE 1
Applicant
Ritva Laury

In our project we investigate how speakers of Finnish and Japanese indicate in conversation that they will continue speaking or that they
are done so that someone else can start speaking. This helps avoid the possibility of more than one person talking at the same time. We
examine large collections of conversations in each language to determine how the rise and fall of the voice, together with sentence
structure and with what is accomplished in the talk, mark continuation or end of talk, and compare how this works in these unrelated and
very different languages. We focus on “neverending sentences”, long stretches of talk by one speaker, often put together in ways that
might not seem grammatically correct. The role of the fall and rise of the voice in the continuation of talk is poorly understood in Finnish
and Japanese, so our project fills a clear gap in research and holds the promise of significant results. The project continues our ongoing
joint work in the grammar of conversation.

Hankkeessamme tutkitaan, miten puhujat osoittavat tavallisessa arkikeskustelussa, että meneillään oleva puheenvuoro jatkuu vielä tai on
jo loppumassa. Keskustelussa tämä on tärkeää vuoronvaihdon sujuvuuden kannalta. Tutkimme tätä suomen- ja japaninkielisistä
keskusteluista vertaillaksemme, miten tämä toimii näissä kahdessa kielessä, jotka eivät ole sukua toisilleen ja ovat rakenteeltaan varsin
erilaisia. Keskitymme siihen, miten äänenkorkeuden vaihtelu, lauserakenteet ja meneillään oleva toiminta liittyvät puheenvuoron jatkon
tai lopun ennakointiin ’loputtomissa lauseissa’, pitkissä puheenvuoroissa, jotka eivät useinkaan ole kieliopeissa kuvattujen
lauseyhdistelmien kaltaisia. Äänenkorkeuden vaihtelua on tutkittu suomen- ja japaninkielisessä arkipuheessa vain vähän, ja siksi
tutkimuksellamme on mahdollisuus saavuttaa merkittäviä uusia tuloksia. Tutkimus liittyy läheisesti aiempaan tutkimusyhteistyöhömme
näiden kielten arkipuheen rakenteesta ja käytöstä.