Lexical stratification in Japanese: Phonological cues to stratal affiliations

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K13039
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02060:Linguistics-related
• Research Institution: Doshisha University
• Principal Investigator: Tanaka Yu 同志社大学, 文化情報学部, 助教 (30802996)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 語種 / 和語 / 漢語 / 外来語 / 固有名 / 音声・音韻 / 日本語 / 言語理論

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The lexicon of Japanese is composed of words of different etymological origins, such as native words, old loanwords from Chinese, and recent loanwords from Western languages. Through corpus-based and experimental methods, this research described the phonological characteristics of each word class and showed how native Japanese speakers distinguish them based on sound differences. It was also shown that proper names constitute an independent class in the vocabulary. These findings were analyzed within a theoretical framework. Several related studies have been published on international journals and presented at conferences.

Free Research Field

言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

日本語が複数の異なる語種を併せ持つことは、日本語の大きな特徴の一つであり、言語獲得の観点から一般言語学研究においても長く関心を集めてきた。本研究では、新たな手法でこの問題に取り組み、母語話者による音声の違いに基づく語種の区別の実態を明らかにしたことで、日本語のより詳しい記述と言語一般の理論の発展に貢献した。またこの知見は、非母語話者に対する日本語教育に応用できる可能性を持ち、社会的な意義も持つ。