Construction of a Contextualized Onomatopoeia Database for Systematizing Onomatopoeic Meanings

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K12791
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Library and information science/Humanistic social informatics
• Research Institution: Hokkai-Gakuen University
• Principal Investigator: Uchida Yuzu 北海学園大学, 工学部, 教授 (80583575)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: オノマトペ / 語義 / コーパス / コロケーション

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we conducted a basic analysis of the occurrence tendencies of Japanese onomatopoeic expressions, their meanings, newly emerging meanings/usages, and the relationship between the meanings of onomatopoeia and contextual information by analyzing various corpora, including local assembly meeting minutes, web documents, humorous texts, search terms on online communities, and several types of magazines.
Moreover, since many Japanese onomatopoeic expressions have multiple meanings, and these meanings are discerned by the surrounding context, we developed an algorithm to automatically determine the meaning of onomatopoeic expressions using computers.

Free Research Field

コーパス言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究の成果により、それぞれのオノマトペがどのような語と強く結びつくのか、どのような文脈で使用可能なのか、文脈によってどのように語義が変化するのかを示すことができる。これは、従来の辞典のような語義といくつかの用例を提示するものとは本質的に異なるものである。日本語非母語話者にとってオノマトペの使い分けは難しいとされているが、本研究で得られた知見を日本語学習に活用することも期待できる。