2010 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Lexicographical study of the dictionaries of the Japanese early Christian documents, based on the database of the contemporary polyglot dictionaries
| Project/Area Number |
20520408
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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 |
Japanese linguistics
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| Research Institution | Tokyo University of Foreign Studies |
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Principal Investigator |
TOYOSHIMA Masayuki Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, アジア・アフリカ言語文化研究所, 教授 (10180192)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2008 – 2010
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| Keywords | キリシタン文献 / 宣教に伴う言語学 / Missionary Linguistics / イエズス会 |
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| Research Abstract |
This research aims to illustrate the inter-relationship among the multi-lingual dictionaries produced in the "Grand-Voyage Era", mainly by Jesuits in the late 16th to the early 17th centuries, with special foci on the dictionaries of Japanese. This research is based on the database of the contemporary (of the Grand-Voyage Era) multi-lingual dictionaries Aside from the major progress in the amelioration of the database of this multi-lingual dictionaries, the research into the earlier part of the Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, of which the first Japanese metal movable types had been believed as having been coined in Japan in 1590s, has revealed that the movable types were produced in Europe in 1586 by the command of the "Tensho Delegation to Europe". This explains the quite restricted usage of the Japanese KANJI characters as if they were alphabets, because the movable types were made just the way as the Latin alphabets. This discovery has been reported in several international academic conferences, as well as in an international symposium on the history of printing and book production as an invited presentation.
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