Abstract
A fundamental issue in compiling a Japanese dictionary is selecting lexical entries and describing the meaning(s) and use cases for the selected entries. Because some old-fashioned Japanese words continue to be used even now, modern Japanese dictionaries usually include certain old-fashioned words. However, up to now, no systematic study has investigated the selection and usage description of old-fashioned words. Therefore, here we first review five already-published modern Japanese dictionaries and clarify the characteristics and variations among them. Subsequently, we propose four categories of old-fashioned Japanese words in terms of the nature and chronological features of the text where those words appear. According to the categorization, we analyze the use cases of the old-fashioned words in the “Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese.” Finally, we discuss a systematic methodology of lexical description for such entries, with a typical example.
