On the Modality of Noun Phrases as Minor Sentences in Japanese
Teruko Shinya · Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks · 2009
This chapter concerns itself with the modality of noun phrases, or sentences without a predicate that are nevertheless self-sufficient functional units. These will be labelled ‘minor sentences’, in contrast with full/complete sentences including a predicate. Japanese minor sentences include holophrase/one-word sentences like Ara ! (‘Oh!’), elliptical sentences like Sore-wa chotto ...(‘That’s a little bit...’) and sentences ending with a noun like Ii tenki ! (‘Nice weather!’). None of these has a subject, predicate, copula or sentence-final particles. Among these minor sentences, I will concentrate in particular on those ending with nouns, which I will call ‘noun phrase sentences’ (NP sentences) hereafter. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.