| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000)
Fiscal Year 1995: ¥1,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Japanese people have two different viewpoints. One represents a personal or inner world and the other an official or outer world. For example, there are two words for "future", one is **** and the other is ****. Chinese also has two words, and excepting that **** can be adverbial, there is no difference in meaning between these two words. In Japanese, **** is also adverbial and **** is noun. But more importantly in Japanese, **** indicates a future of someone and **** a future of, say, human beings or the world. There are other pairs constructed by reversing word order but which are not related to the view of the world, such as ****, ****. And they are used to differentiate concrete and abstract ideas. For example, **** means steps of a house and **** means steps of level. Historically, when the word "society" was first translated into Japanese, both **** and **** were used. And later **** came to mean, society and ****. In Chinese, both **** and **** were used at some period, but later **** became dominant and **** disappeared. But in Japan, **** means ancestors of an individual and **** means of human beings in general or of an ethnic group.
In oreder to clarify such a difference between Chinese and Japanese. The conclusion is that Chinese perspective is narrower in varying degrees than that of Japanese regardless of time and space. And this might explain why Chinese did not develop Tense for an event placed along a time axis, yet developed Aspect when an event's development is the main concern.
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