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SUMMARY:Eugenia Diegoli (Bologna): Questioning the question mark: prel
 iminary considerations from a web corpus of Japanese
UID:4149-e924-f650-3292@www.dhss.phil.fau.eu
DESCRIPTION:Join us for the RC21 Project Symposium\, where invited spe
 akers and project team members\, Poster Presenters will present their 
 work on methodology and applications of concordance analysis! &nbsp\; 
 Eugenia Diegoli (Bologna): » Questioning the question mark: prelimina
 ry considerations from a web corpus of Japanese« Abstract: Introducti
 on: Participants in online written contexts use punctuation signs in i
 nnovative and channel-specific ways to reach their interactional goals
  (Androutsopoulos\, 2023). This talk employs corpus-assisted methods t
 o investigate the patterns and functions of the question mark (QM) in 
 the Japanese web corpus Yahoo! Chiebukuro data (LY Corporation\, 2024)
 . Data and Methods: Yahoo! Chiebukuro is a Q&A website with subfora on
  specific subjects. I analyze two samples (ca. 3m tokens) from the sub
 fora ikikata to renai\, ningen kankei no nayami ‘ways of living and 
 romantic relationships\, relational worries’ (the Relationship corpu
 s) and\, by way of contrast\, nyūsu\, seiji\, kokusai jōsei ‘news\
 , politics\, international affairs’ (the News corpus). These were pr
 ocessed using AntConc (Anthony\, 2023) and analyzed by combining corpu
 s tools and close reading of (segments of) texts\, including concordan
 ces\, as typical in Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (CaDS). Why the 
 Question Mark? The QM occurs significantly more frequently in both cor
 pora when compared against the same reference corpus\, and hence is in
 dicative of style. Moreover\, interrogative constructions in Japanese 
 do not require a QM (the interrogative particle ka\, to which the QM t
 ends to be attached\, has the same function). Therefore\, it conveys a
 dditional meaning beyond merely marking a question. Results: The analy
 sis of 5-grams corroborated the assumption that in both corpora\, the 
 QM almost invariably follows the interrogative particle ka\, making it
  redundant as an interrogative marker. It also revealed that the QM te
 nds to collocate with expressions of **modality**\, specifically
DTSTART:20250321T113000Z
DTEND:20250321T140000Z
LOCATION:Kollegienhaus\, Universitätsstraße 15\, 91054 Erlangen
DTSTAMP:20260515T043422Z
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