National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics

Empirical and Applied Research on the Japanese Language Based on Open Language Resources

The National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL) is developing all joint research projects under the core research project "Empirical and Applied Research on the Japanese Language based on Open Language Resources. Taking the existing research resources into account, NINJAL will create language resources— such as new corpora and archives of endangered languages and dialects—and conduct research with these at the core. All joint research is based on the philosophy of open data and open science. Empirical research activities in the Japanese language are conducted with domestic and international collaborators in an open environment.

Purpose

This project promotes the mission of NINJAL in light of current social conditions and academic trends. Through systematic cooperation with universities and research institutes in Japan and abroad, this project aims to collect diverse language resources, make them available as digital language resources for the common use of universities and the research community, and respond to social needs through research that applies them.

The project results will be disseminated throughout Japan and worldwide in the form of (international) digital language resources, various professional and public events, etc. The language resources will be applied to education and lexicography and used in industry and academia through joint research and industrial applications.

The project also aims to contribute to local communities and society by studying social issues related to language, preserving records of endangered languages and dialects, and conducting activities to revitalize them. The results will support Japanese language classes at universities and recurrent education for Japanese language teachers. In promoting the project, NINJAL aims to create a new academic field of "Studies in Language Resource" that responds to academic and social demands and plans to foster young researchers who will be active in this field in cooperation with the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, which is scheduled to open a new course from FY2023.

Organization

This Core Research Project consists of seven subprojects supporting each of the four priority areas— "Lexicology and Dictionaries," "Language Education and Development," "Theory and Experimentation," and "Field and Social Research." It also comprises collaborative research projects led by external researchers. Each project will work on its research agenda while cooperating with an awareness of collaboration, fusion, and integration among the fields; these projects as a whole will form one core research project of NINJAL. The joint research will be conducted in close collaboration with the Center for Language Resources Development and the Center for the Promotion of Collaborative Research.

This project is positioned as one of the Institutional Core Research Projects of the National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU), and will be implemented in collaboration with other core research projects conducted by the NIHU.