The process into modern Chinese: Japanese as one of external incentives for the disyllabification of lexicon

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02541
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Kansai University
• Principal Investigator: SHIN KOKUI 関西大学, 外国語学部, 教授 (50258125)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 日中語彙交流 / 二字語化 / 和漢相通 / 一字語二字語相通 / 漢字語 / 学術用語 / 叙述語 / 基本語化

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study investigates the disyllabification of the lexicon existed in Chinese from a perspective of modernization of lexicon. Hypotheses are proposed as follows: In the process of the modernization of Chinese, new concepts gradually start to be represented by disyllabic words, while monophonic words with old concepts have to acquire a (a group of) disyllabic form. Simultaneously, the modernization of Japanese also shows some similar disyllabification characteristics. First, increasing Chinese disyllabic words are used to represent new Japanese concepts. Second, Japanese original words that contain old concepts have to add a (a group of) form of disyllabic Chinese words. Both of the two languages assume a trend of disyllabification in the lexicon. Since twentieth Century, Japanese has fulfilled an important role over the process of Chinese disyllabification, which has been preliminarily confirmed through the large-scale lexicon investigation in our research.

Free Research Field

言語学