2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

A Contact-Linguistic Study with Recipe Names in "Cookpad" - With Special Reference to Borrowing of English Preposition into Japanese

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	16K13234
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	English linguistics
Research Institution	University of Tsukuba
Principal Investigator	Shimada Masaharu 筑波大学, 人文社会系, 准教授 (30254890)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	小野雄一筑波大学, 人文社会系, 教授 (70280352) 長野明子東北大学, 情報科学研究科, 准教授 (90407883) 山村崇斗筑波大学, 人文社会系, 助教 (30706940)
Project Period (FY)	2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
Keywords	言語接触 / 生成文法 / 借入 / 機能範疇 / 名付け / 料理用語
Outline of Final Research Achievements	Although Japanese has no preposition, our on-line recipe site search suggests that English prepositions, such as in, on, with, and so on, are often borrowed and used in Japanese recipe names. The aim of this study is to make some contribution to linguistic research through a consideration of what is going on in these borrowing cases. We have attested examples from a Japanese internet recipe site provided by Cookpad co. Ltd. and examined how English prepositions are used in this biggest recipe site. From a theoretical-linguistic viewpoint, the attested data should not be regarded as misuse of English by native speakers of Japanese. Rather they are strictly restricted and never chaotic. We are led to the conclusion that borrowing of English preposition into Japanese gets along with grammatical principles in our mind/brain.
Free Research Field	理論言語学
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	これまで他言語の要素を自身の言語に借用する現象は文化や社会という側面から研究されることが多く、時には他言語の「誤用」と決めつけられることさえあった。しかし、本課題ではヒトが脳内に持つ文法機能を研究する理論言語学の観点からこの現象をとりあげた。この現象が文化とは別次元の、純粋に文法的な現象であることが示された点に、本研究の成果の学術的な意義がある。また、外国語との接触が多い国際化した昨今の社会へ本研究で得られた知見を還元することには大きな社会的意義があるといえる。