2000 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Systematic and philological investigation of Japanese and German Idioms
| Project/Area Number |
11610528
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
独語・独文学
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| Research Institution | University of Tsukuba |
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Principal Investigator |
ITO Makoto Modern Languages and Cultures Assistant professor, 現代語・現代文化学系, 助教授 (60168375)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1999 – 2000
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| Keywords | Phraseology / contrastive research / Idioms / Universality of language / metaphorical meaning / figurativeness |
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| Research Abstract |
Over the last twenty years phraseology has received considerable interest within linguistics and is now not a small section of Lexicology. It has, in fact, become an independent and very important field in German linguistics. One of the most interesting themes within Phraseology in Germany is contra linguistic research of idioms in foreign languages. The purpose of contra linguistic research is to clarify the universal features of idioms in foreign languages. In previous contrastive idiom research on idioms, which developed in European linguistics, emphasis was placed on only European languages, for example, English, French, Russian and German. Non-European languages, for example Japanese and other Asian languages were almost never a focus of interest. Those European languages have a lot of historical contact with each other in terms of in culture and typology. Therefore, it is certain that the idioms in those languages share many similarities at the in lexical, syntactic and semantic levels. To promote contrastive research on phraseology, however, it seems necessary and very important to compare not only European languages with each other, but also European languages with non-European ones and to clarify universal and particular features in other languages.
In this investigation German idioms were compared with Japanese Idioms, with focus given to the following points : the metaphorical meaning do constituents of idioms (lexical-metaphorical meaning) and the figurative idioms existing in both languages. Through this investigation, it was found that German and Japanese idioms, in spite of great cultural and typological differences, exhibit many similarities in terms of the lexical-metaphorical meaning of constituents of idioms and also at the figurative level. The results are seen to be of use in future research on contra linguistic Phraseology.
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Research Products
(4 results)
