Classification of Japanese Conjunctions from the Scope

Conjunctions as the Sentence Connection and as Part of Text Structure

Abstract

Research on conjunctions has developed around the nature of the connective relationship that shows how they connect contexts that come before and after them; however, we need to clarify not only the relationship but also the scope of connection – which parts of a text are connected by conjunctions – to describe the function of conjunctions in texts. Thus, the author analyzed the characteristics of the scope of the connection by examining 15 types of conjunctions used in humanities papers. The results revealed the following three points; first, it is possible to classify the 15 conjunctions into four types. In some cases, conjunctions that belong to the same connective relationship can be classified into a different type of scope, or those belonging to different connective relationships can be classified into the same scope type. Second, the characteristics of the internal structure in the scope, the degree of their grammaticalization, and whether there are any modifications to the preceding sentence affect the scope of conjunction. Third, when the scope is wide, scope of conjunction often contains multiple topics or the writer's the thought process leading to a conclusion.