| Research Abstract |
The head investigator developed SEAL the first Japanese data-processing system for linguistic geography using a personal computer in 1983. The original system was updated to accommodate the progress of the hardware and software, resulting in version 4.3 for MS-DOS in 1995, version 5.0 for Windows 95 in 1998, version 6.0 for Windows 98/Me/2000 in 2001. Now Windows users can use SEAL, link the data with the other software, make fine, colored maps and process data more sophisticatedly. In the present research, the improvement of the SEAL system was continued, and the method was applied to Japanese geolinguistic data.
1.Improvement of the SEAL system
The SEAL system has been improved based on the needs of the head researcher herself and SEAL users' requests. The program is opened to the public and prepared for download in the head researcher's Web page, http://www.nicol.ac.jp/~fukusima/. The English version which works on the English, Chinese, and Korean Windows was added and is published in the English Web page, http://www.nicol.ac.jp/~fukusima/english/. Thus SEAL is now multi-lingual and is used not only by Japanese dialectologists but also by Chinese and Korean dialectologists. Two users' manuals, English and Japanese, were published, and users' manuals in the PDF format are available in the Web page. During the present term of project, the system was improved as versions 6.1J, 6.1E, 6.2E, 6.3E, and finally 7.0J. In version 7.0J, a new method of integrating linguistic maps was introduced : 'group maps'.
2.Geolinguistic researches using the SEAL system
The geolinguistic data in Tokunoshima, Amami and those of the young generation in Niigata Prefecture were analyzed. The results were reported in the 11th International Congress of Methods in Dialectology, Joensuu, Finland (summer 2002) and the 4th International Congress of Dialectologists and Geolinguists, Riga, Latvia (summer 2003) and published for journals and books.
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