Transcript Slide 1

JPN494: Japanese Language and Linguistics
JPN520: Advanced Japanese Language and
Linguistics
Introduction
08/22/2006
Big Questions
 What
is Japanese (What is the
Japanese language)?
 What is (a) language?
 What is linguistics?
Language as a tool
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To learn a language as your second language is one
way to understand it.
→ But there are many others!
Why do you learn a language?
to communicate with people
to know more about other cultures
for ease of business
for fun
…
Language is a tool.
Language as an object of study (1)
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Properties of a language itself
- How sounds are produced and combined
(phonetics & phonology; 音声学・音韻論)
- How words are structured
(morphology; 形態論)
- How sentences are structured
(syntax; 統語論)
- How discourses (or texts) are structured
(pragmatics, stylistics, discourse studies;
語用論, 文体論, 談話研究)
Language as an object of study (1)
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- How can the meanings of individual expressions
be represented? How can meanings of complex
expressions be calculated based on those of simpler
expressions?
(semantics; 意味論)
- How do languages change?
(historical linguistics; 歴史言語学)
General Linguistics vs. Japanese, English, …
Linguistics
Language as an object of study (1)
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Why do we study them?
Practical reasons:
language teaching (pedagogy),
machine translation,
man-machine interface (phone banking, Google), …
Above all:
Knowledge about how (a) language works gives us
lots of information about how human mind works
Language as an object of study (2)
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Interactions between language and
culture/society
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sociolinguistics; 社会言語学
geographical linguistics/dialectology;
地理言語学/方言学
anthropological linguistics/cultural linguistics (?)
言語人類学/文化言語学
Language as an object of study (2)
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Why do we study them?
politics of language (language of education,
official/national language, etc.),
revitalization/documentation of endangered
languages,
etc.
Language as an object of study (3)
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Interactions between language and human
mind
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psycholinguistics; 心理言語学
neuro-linugistics; 神経言語学
applied linguistics; 応用言語学
language acquisition studies; 言語習得研究
Language as an object of study (3)
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Why do we study them?
treatment of aphasia (language disorders),
effective language teaching,
more effective communication (e.g. language of
advertisement, propaganda),
etc.
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The list goes on …
philosophy of language (strong connection to
formal semantics)
– mathematical linguistics (connection to formal
syntax)
– computational linguistics
…
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Language as an object of study
(summary)
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Properties of individual languages & language in
general
Interactions between language and culture/society
Interactions between language and human mind
→ An individual language (e.g. Japanese or a dialect
thereof) can be studied from various directions