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Abstract The ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ question has long attracted scholars' attention who study question types in Chinese. Along with the gradual deepening of the research on mood expressions in Japanese since the 1980s, the Chinese-Japanese contrastive study on mood expressions has extended as well. While scholars generally agree that the Japanese mood form ′nodewanaika′ corresponds to the Chinese ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction, a survey into corpus data of natural conversations revealed that in 675 minutes of conversations altogether, there are only 38 cases of ′nodewanaika′ used by 25 groups of Japanese females. On the contrary, a single group of Chinese females would use more than that number of ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction in their natural conversations. In order to find out some underlying reasons for the difference, we investigated the Japanese translations of the ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction in different contexts: Ⅰ.When the ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction is used as a focus marker：Its corresponding Japanese construction is ′no(da)ka′ . For instance(AM=agglutinative morpheme)：（1）是不是′你明天到车站去买票？（1′）′あなたが明日駅へチケットを買いに行くのか。（2）你是不是′明天到车站去买票？（2′）あなたは′明日駅へチケットを買いに行くのか。 There are two means of expression in Chinese that can mark the interrogative focus: either position shift of the ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction, or stress of the following syllable. But only the syllabic stress can be used in Japanese to mark the focus, for ′no(da)ka′ appears only at the sentence end. An additional ′ga′of the ′sōki′ is needed to mark the subject focus if necessary. That Chinese uses word order and Japanese employs some agglutinative morpheme for the same purpose fully demonstrates their different characteristics in linguistic typology. Ⅱ. When the ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction is used as a question with an affirmative inclination. For instance：（3）老师，您是不是也去杭州啊？ ′nodewanaika′ with an affirmative inclination in Japanese is considered to be the corresponding expression with the Chinese ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction. Yet the two are used with widely different frequencies in natural conversation. This is because ′nodewanaika′ always implies the speaker's speculation about the hearer's private activity and the speaker's intention to get the hearer's confirmation, which is usually considered to be rather impolite. Since this is the ″pragmatic constraint″ of a question with ′nodewanaika′, a different interrogative strategy should be used to translate ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ questions. （3′）先生も杭州へいらっしゃるのですか。 Ⅲ. When used in the ″vp (,)Shi-Bu-Shi″ question without an accent. For instance：（4）最近天气有点怪怪的，是不是？ This type of ″vp (,)Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction usually begins with a statement of either common knowledge or common understanding of the present circumstance, suggesting that the speaker uses the ″vp (,) Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction to get the hearer' empathy. ′yone′ is the word in Japanese for seeking the Hearer's empathy, sympathy. More importantly, ′yone′ is very close to the ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction in both frequency of use and the seeking for communicative empathy. （4′）最近の天気はちょっとおかしいよね。 Ⅳ. The ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction is used as a question with an accent. For instance：（5）昨天的蛋糕′是不是不好吃？（6）A：跟你那时候的反应一模一样。 B：′是不是 啊。 ′desyō′ in Japanese has two pragmatic features：One is to stress the speaker's personal claim；The other is to emphasize the effect on the hearer. It therefore has pragmatic similarity to the “Shi-Bu-Shi” construction. （5′）昨日のケーキ，おいしくないでしょう↑（6′）A：あなたのその時の反応と全く一緒だった。 B：でしょう↑ Through the study on Japanese translation, we have discovered that the ″Shi-Bu-Shi″ construction in Chinese diversifies its synchronic usage in terms of sentence location, sentence accent, and so on. In contrast, Japanese with a fairly tight constraint on position shift has developed a variety of mood forms to express different moods so as to meet different expressive needs. Forms of mood usually appear at the end of a sentence. This discovery can be directly applied to both Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL) and Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language to Chinese students. It may also provoke new reflections on the methodology for contrastive study in Chinese and Japanese.
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