Research on Japanese sentences that are easy to transliterate ink character into braille

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K16848
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Japanese linguistics
• Research Institution: Kanto Junior College
• Principal Investigator: NAKANO MAKI 関東短期大学, その他部局等, 講師 (30569778)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 日本語点字 / 点字表記

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Since Japanese braille use only kana, concerns came out. Concerns that using only kana sentences homonyms and kanji-mixed sentences homonyms might differ or influence the reading comprehension and readability. Few quantitative surveys were done to figure out these concerns.

This study found out that when the transliteration from ink character attached to braille transliteration with translation notes “familiarity to the related word” was possible. Moreover, it was also found out that the characteristic of braille sentences, which are dedicated sentences, did not change much even if it was in the word-type ratio, e.g. wago, gairai-go and kango, nor with the characteristics of the conventional publishing media. Concerns about homonyms to kana dedicated sentences should be considered in relation to the essential characters of kanji.

Free Research Field

人文学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

日本語点字は視読文字である墨字とは異なり、公的な表記としては漢字かなまじりではなくかな専用文で書かれる。そのため、世界の多くの言語の表記法と同様に表音文字で書かれ、わかちがきを行うという特徴が見られる。本研究では、歴史的蓄積のある日本語点字の文体的特徴のなかには、「漢字を使わない」ことによる影響というものは特に掲出されることはなく、それよりは点字文の文体的特徴は書き手の属性やその文章が掲載される媒体の影響の方が大きいということが指摘できた。これは日本語も世界の他の多くの言語と同様に、表音文字と分かち書きによる表記が可能であるというこれまでの文字研究の成果を補強するものであるといえるだろう。