The particle 'ka' and its significance

Sammanfattning: This work investigates the significance of the sentence-final particle 'ka' in modern Japanese by means of questionnaire and qualitative discussions with native informants. The Japanese language makes use of short words known as particles to indicate grammatical category. 'ka' is one such particle that can be used to indicate, among other things, the interrogative mood. Questions can be formed both with and without 'ka', hinting at a relatively low semantic significance in select cases. The results of this study show a few cases where the sentence-final particle 'ka' may be omitted as well as a couple in which it may not, demonstrating that the particle is not purely decorative and does add semantic value to the sentence for some cases, but that it in others provides little gain other than giving the sentence a slightly different nuance.