Exploring Variation in Contemporary Japanese: Multiple Approaches

Project leader: AIZAWA Masao
Professor, Department of Language Change and Variation, NINJAL
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.

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