Abstract
The Japanese word dakara has a causal usage and a non-causal usage. The latter is used, for example, when the speaker feels irritated by the hearer not understanding what he says. The purpose of this article is to describe the functions of the latter usage and to examine the process of the functional extension of dakara. First, the latter usage is classified into three cases: [1] the case in which the speaker repeats a previous utterance after dakara with a performative verb, [2] the similar case without any performative verb, and [3] the case without any repetition of utterance. Then the semantic relation between each case and the causal usage is examined. For example, in cases [1] and [2] some examples can be considered to show a causal relationship between speech acts. In conclusion, we determine that the function of dakara extended from expressing the causal relationship between sentences to expressing it between speech acts, and then it acquired discourse functions to indicate the speaker's attitude to his utterances.
