Exploring Variation in Contemporary Japanese: Multiple Approaches
Project leader | : | AIZAWA Masao Professor, Department of Language Change and Variation, NINJAL |
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Project Period | : | October 2009 - March 2016 |
Research field | : | sociolinguistics |
Keywords | : | language variation, language change, language data |
Summary
This project explores the dynamics and direction of linguistic variation and change observed in contemporary (1920s up to the present) Japanese through multiple innovative approaches, analyzing a wide range of phenomena from phonetics and lexicon to grammar and orthography. In the process, an attempt will be made to explore brand-new linguistic data (e.g., various kinds of corpora) using a set of innovative survey and analysis methods, and thus promote a synthesis of lexicology and sociolinguistics. Based on these concrete data and methodologies, the project aims at establishing a new applied field in linguistics for dealing with actual language problems as well as a firm research foundation for observation and analysis from multiple viewpoints of the ever-changing contemporary Japanese language.