Paper short abstract:

The presenter argues the importance of natural conversation data, focusing on teaching "incomplete utterances" and "co-constructed utterances" by NCRB. She also insists that the NCRB as a platform for utilizing teaching resources is essential to improve the Japanese language education in Europe.

Paper long abstract:

The present study focuses on "incomplete utterances" and "co-constructed utterances" taken from BTSJ Japanese Conversation Corpus (BTSJ-JCC), and analyses how these utterances are behaved in natural conversations and what kinds of functions they have. Although these phenomena are commonly perceived in naturally occurring conversations, they are not found in the "textbooks" for Japanese language education; therefore, unlike other types of utterances, it is not possible to compare them with phenomena observed in natural conversations. However, the analysis of the corpus reveals that these two utterance types have various functions and play an important role in smooth and naturalistic communications; for example, (i) many"incomplete utterances" not only have an "hedging function" (negative politeness), but also (ii) they trigger a "co-constructed utterance," which invites the addressee to complete the speaker's unfinished utterance, therefore, (iii) when the addressee is in a close relationship with the speaker, she/he perceives this signal immediately and indicate that she/he "understands" the speaker's intention. Incomplete utterances trigger addressee's positive politeness in this manner, and thus, they facilitates smooth conversation. Therefore, whereas the native speakers of Japanese employ various strategies such as incomplete utterances and co-constructed utterances according to the social status and/or social distance of the addressees, it is almost impossible for the learners of Japanese as a foreign language such as those in Europe to acquire these phenomena sorely from the existing Japanese textbooks. Based on the current situation introduced above, we have developed a multifunctional database "Natural Conversation Resource Bank: NCRB", which at the same time is a platform for collaboratively-constructed "WEB teaching materials using natural conversations". As the NCRB is equipped with "support functions for developing teaching materials for natural conversations" - for example, it automatically generates a natural conversation text associated with a specific video-clips - the users can develop "WEB materials" with instructions of conversation strategies as well as those of grammatical items by following the simple illustrations built in the program.

Finally, I insist that the platform such as NCRB for utilizing teaching resources is essential to improve the Japanese language education in Europe.