A Typological Study on the Complexity of Japanese Dialects

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K00627
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 02070:Japanese linguistics-related
• Research Institution: Osaka University
• Principal Investigator: Shibuya Katsumi 大阪大学, 文学研究科, 教授 (90206152)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 方言類型論 / 複雑性 / 標準語

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Recent sociolinguistic typology addresses that languages such as English and Spanish that repeatedly had contact with other languages tend to be simplified in their systems and structures. Based on this line of study, the present study aimed to verify this hypothesis through the classification of Japanese dialects into traditional and contact varieties and the analysis of their systems and structures from the viewpoint of language complexity.
The results include: those socially isolated traditional dialects tend to have analytic grammatical items that are independent from each other and to be arranged sequentially on which (morpho-)phonetic rules apply and change the surface structure of their forms, while the grammatical items of urban dialects that experienced dense contact with other dialects are essentially analytic in nature but tend to extend/more grammaticalize their meaning.

Free Research Field

日本語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

学術面では、日本の周辺部の方言と都市部の方言の形態統語的な特徴を、複雑性という指標で整理することによって、日本語の方言に特徴的に観察される社会言語類型的な傾向性を指摘し、この分野の国際的な対話を促進する材料を提供した。
また社会的には、未だに流布している、「言語には、未開の言語と、高度に発展した文明の言語がある」、あるいはその反動としての、「すべての言語の複雑度は等しい」といった、いずれも偏った言語の認識を是正する役割を担うものである。