<論文>スペイン語を母語とする日本語学習者による中止形の意味解釈 --翻訳課題における関係的意味の処理を根拠に--

Abstract

中止形は非常に頻繁に使われる接続表現であり，日本語教育でも初級から勉強する．しかし，中級以上の学習者であっても習得が不十分な場合がある．日本語から母語への翻訳課題における産出でも不自然な訳文が現れることは珍しくない．本稿はスペイン語を母語とする中級学習者による中止形の解釈を検討対象とし，同じ箇所に現れる中止形の「関係的意味」(津留崎2003a, b)の多様性がどのように，かつ，どの程度，文章理解度と関係しているかを把握することを目的としている．意味の分類については主に日本語記述文法研究会(2008)と，宮崎(2020)を参考にしたが，訳文に反映される解釈の多様性(「曖昧性」) も積極的に含めた．データとしては，和文西訳の学士課程で出された翻訳課題の原文(合計13の文章)と学習者(合計40名)による訳文で見られる解釈を分析した．段落全体の理解度も評価し，中止形の関係的意味の多様性との相関関係を検討した．結果の質的データも量的データも関係的意味の多様性と理解度の親密な相互関係を示しているが，従属度など文の統語的特徴との関係性も高いことがわかった．

Japanese -te and renʼyō connectives are very frequent in both conversational and written language, and a part of every curriculum of Japanese as a foreign language. However, evidence shows that intermediate and advanced students display some difficulty using these constructions to produce natural sentences, which is also evidenced in translation tasks. The purpose of this study is to investigate how and to what extent the diversity of relational meanings (Tsurusaki, 2003a, b) proposed by Spanish-speaking intermediate students in their translations is related to their level of comprehension of the original texts, which contain several cases of connectives. A classification for the meanings which draws mainly from the proposals by the Japanese Descriptive Grammar Research Association (Nihongo kijutsu bumpō kenkyūkai; 2008) and Miyazaki (2020) was used to accommodate the range of the meanings (or experienced “ambiguity”) found. Thirteen texts and their translations by forty students were analyzed for their interpretations. The comprehension reflected on each version was also graded paragraph by paragraph. Both qualitative and quantitative data suggest a strong link between meaning diversity of connectives and general comprehension of the texts in intermediate students, although syntactic complexity should not be dismissed as a key factor in the analysis.