High Rising Intonation in Japanese Discourse

Abstract

This paper discusses high-rising terminals (HRTs) in Japanese discourse. A HRT is an upward intonation like that which occurs at the end of an interrogative phrase, yet an utterance with HRT is not an interrogative. The popular notion of HRT is that it is used by young women; I show that some people use HRT regardless of age. Instead of focusing on the speaker who produces HRTs, the study looks at the discourse environment in which it occurs. Using natural conversation data, I show that HRTs have multiple functions in Japanese discourse: to highlight repairs, to mark the boundary of a discourse topic, and to mark lists. HRT is shown to be one of many mechanisms that the speaker has at his/her disposal to contexualize the utterance.