Topic Opening Markers in Japanese Native Speakers' Conversations

This paper is to specify the topic opening markers by Japanese native speakers. The data consist of eleven audio- and video-taped 20-minute dyadic Japanese conversations. The analysis focused upon a variety of the topic opening markers, their frequency, and correlations between them and types of topic shift. As a result, six kinds of topic opening markers were observed. They function as: 1) making topic conspicuous, 2) showing change of recognition, 3) showing hesitation in speech, 4) connecting, 5) meta-language, and 6) calling names. In order to analyze the tendency of usage in topic opening markers depending on the type of topic shift, all the topic shifts were divided into two types: continuous shift and discontinuous shift. As for the rate of occurrence of topic opening markers, it became clear that more topic opening markers occur in discontinuous shift. As for each topic opening marker, the marker showing change of recognition was only notably higher in discontinuous shift than in continuous shift. No difference was clearly seen in the other topic opening markers. These results show that Japanese speakers us e topic opening markers to show their considerations for their counterparts, the uncertainty, and hesitation to introduce a topic by him/herself