The history of Japanese studied through historical(non-literary)documents: development of the methods

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23820014
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Japanese linguistics
Research Institution	The University of Tokyo
Principal Investigator	NAGASAWA Itsuki 東京大学, 大学院・人文社会系研究科, 助教 (50613882)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2012
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2012)
Budget Amount *help	¥2,470,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥570,000) Fiscal Year 2012: ¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000) Fiscal Year 2011: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
Keywords	日本語 / 古文書 / 変体漢文 / 文法 / 語彙 / 言語接触 / 日本語史 / 漢文 / 日本漢文 / 和化漢文 / 言語
Research Abstract	Historical documents and letters are important sources for studying the history of Japanese. However, few of them have been used for describing the history of Japanese. Literary documents have been attached more importance in it than non-literary documents like legal and political documents or letters. In this study I aimed to reveal new aspects of the history of Japanese through such non-literary sources. Medieval court documents issued by Kamakura Bakufu were the main source of this study. Most of the texts were written in Chinese characters, but modified with Japanese syntax and lexicon. They were carefully examined to investigate the influence of Japanese. Through this study I also considered the methodology to use historical documents and letters as a source of studyinghistory of Japanese.