open access

https://doi.org/10.14943/2115.99351

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/99351

Contrastive Study of Japanese to omou and Uzbek deb o‘ylayman

日本語

対照

2026-03-20

日本北方言語学会

Northern Language Studies

16

215-237

This study aims to clarify the features and modal meanings of the Uzbek expression deb o‘ylayman by contrasting it with the Japanese expression to omou. To the best of my knowledge, previous studies have not examined deb o‘ylayman as a modal expression, whereas Japanese scholarship has widely analyzed to omou from a modal perspective. In addition, Moriyama (1992) has classified the use of to omou into two types: uncertainty-marking use and subjectivity-marking use. Furthermore, contrastive research between Japanese and Korean has shown that the Korean quotative clause followed by ko sayngkakhata does not include information indicating difficulty in determining true or falsity at that time of utterance, nor difficulty in reaching a conclusion. First, the study presents examples of deb o‘ylayman drawn from the Uzbek discourse corpus, focusing on the predicate forms in quotative clauses. Second, based on findings from previous Japanese studies on to omou and contrastive research on to omou and ko sayngkakhata, this study examines the use of deb o‘ylayman through consultation with a native Uzbek speaker. These methodological steps clarify the characteristics of deb o‘ylayman and contribute to research on modality and discourse analysis in Uzbek. The study concludes that deb o‘ylayman is difficult to use when the speaker has clear evidence or direct experience; rather it is typically used for judgments that are not based on such information or experience. Consequently, the range of uses of deb o‘ylayman is more limited than that of to omou. This limitation may be attributable to the following factors: 1. the verbal stem o‘yla- can express not only omou (“think”) but also kangaeru (“consider”), and 2. in Japanese conversation, sentences rarely finish with only a finite form, whereas in Uzbek, sentences can end with finite forms alone, which may express the speaker’s intention or stance toward the hearer.

紀要論文

Version of Record

2185-7121

AA12516968