Profile
- Research Subject
My research explores contemporary Japanese through the use of linguistic corpora. By constructing and annotating corpora, I examine the distribution and actual usage of various linguistic phenomena, particularly as they appear in written language. In recent years, I have focused especially on the analysis of figurative expressions.
- Research Fields
- Japanese, Corpus linguistics
- Faculty - Division / Research Group / Laboratory
- Division of Humanities / Research Group of Linguistics / Laboratory of Linguistics
- Graduate School - Division / Department / Laboratory
- Division of Humanities / Department of Linguistics / Laboratory of Linguistics
- School - Course / Laboratory
- Division of Humanities and Human Sciences / Course of Linguistics and Literature / Laboratory of Linguistics
- Related Links
Lab.letters
Building and using Japanese usage examples as resources
in the world of Japanese corpus linguistics
There are Japanese expressions that translate into “a person like a demon” or “a face like udon noodles.” Who used them, in what era, with what meaning, and how frequently did they appear in which media? Corpus-based Japanese linguistics collects real examples of Japanese usage, links them to related information, and organizes them as resources to investigate intriguing phenomena. It’s a world of endless construction to process language as information. Corpora, as they grow into rich treasure troves of information tailored to research objectives, act like mirrors reflecting today’s search-driven era. They pass along to the future answers to the mysteries of the Japanese language, such as when a specific meaning emerged, when its frequent use began, and what trends emerge when searching across eras.
Design your own research approach
Think beyond the numbers.
What expressions frequently appear in mystery novels? Are there any phrases unique to Japanese light novels? Corpora are useful for quantitative investigation of topics of interest. One option is to enrich existing corpora with new types of information. Another is to construct a new corpus yourself. In the process of formulating a research question and designing your own investigation, you are expected to move beyond simply being a user of existing tools and to use data with a clear research purpose. Simply looking at search results is not the endpoint of an investigation. Avoid being swayed solely by numbers. Go out and seek the actual truth in the world. This cultivates a perspective that is also important in society.
Message
Every day, we encounter various kinds of information conveyed through language. The original Japanese version of this message is also a piece of modern Japanese writing. Have you ever found yourself intrigued or curious about a particular expression you’ve seen or heard? Data on modern Japanese is abundant and readily available around us, constantly being produced. It seems likely that somewhere out there exists an example similar to the expression that caught your attention. Perhaps it was precisely because it wasn’t commonplace that it piqued your interest. Under specific conditions, it might even be a perfectly ordinary expression. Doesn’t that make you want to know how that expression is distributed and characterized in actual usage?
To investigate the actual patterns of linguistic phenomena, it may require systematic and painstaking work that begins with collecting linguistic expressions—which may vanish after a single use—without bias (ideally gathering all examples on as large a scale as possible), preserving them appropriately, classifying them, and attaching information to each piece of data that enables analysis. Why not think together about what kinds of Japanese data to examine and how to approach them? What can we convey, learn, and preserve through language? Let us explore the potential of linguistic resources together.