The Japanese particle ne appears frequently in conversations among native speakers. There are two types of ne : the interjective ne and the non-interjective ne . The non-interjective ne is often called a sentence-final particle ( = SFP) and appears on various occasions. In this thesis, the functions of the SFP ne are classified into three types according to conversational contexts. These are labeled neF1 , neF2 , and neF3 . NeF1is used when a speaker asks the listener for confirmation of what is being stated, with the assumption that the information contained in the statement is also recognized by or known to the addressee. neF2 appears in a concurring response from the interlocutor to the preceding statement which, usually, although not necessarily, contains neF1 . It functions to show the speaker's agreement with the other party. neF3 is used when the speaker provides new information that is not yet known to the hearer.
Among the three functions of ne , neF3 is unique in that it overlaps with yo contextually. In providing new information, native Japanese speakers choose ne rather than yo to mitigate the illocutionary force of the statement. An utterance with yo sounds assertive and often sounds rude when used to a person of higher status. This leads to the question of whether or not English-speaking learners of Japanese know that it is rude to use yo with a person of a higher status. The following hypotheses were formulated: first, English speaking learners of Japanese use yo more frequently than Japanese native speakers because assertive utterances do not always sound rude in English. This, of course, assumes that the learners transfer their cultural assumptions from English to Japanese. Second, English-speaking learners of Japanese use neF3 less frequently because its use is scarcely taught in class.
To test these hypotheses, an experiment was conducted with twelve American learners of Japanese, and the results were compared with those of twelve native speakers of Japanese. It was found that non-native speakers of Japanese produced neF3 much less frequently than did natives. In addition, it appears that their use of neF3 was directly proportional to their fluency in Japanese. It was also observed that some non-natives used yo instead of neF3 in reply to the questions whereas no Japanese native subjects used yo . In conclusion, the non-natives did not use neF3 in the same way as the natives. However, it was not possible to conclude that there is a significant difference in the uses of yo between natives and non-natives due to the small number of the subjects.