Corpus-Based Study on the Co-Occurrence of Nominal Adjectives “Na ” and “No ”

Abstract

The actual status of the usage of a noun-modifying clause by nominal adjectives “na ” (e.g., kougakuna purezento /expensive present) and “no ” (e.g., kougakuno purezento /expensive present) was investigated in a balanced corpus. BCCWJ was used as research data, a search for the pattern of “noun (common-adjectival+na/no +noun)” was performed, and an elaborate analysis of potential nominal adjectives with a frequency of appearance of more than 10 was conducted (token frequency 21,734, type frequency 277). Cluster analysis and discriminant analysis were used as methods of data analysis and after dividing into groups we examined the difference in intergroup cluster number or word familiarity with an analysis of variance. The presence of three groups was revealed after the investigation. Group 1 (e.g., saikou / excellent, tairyou /massive, oogata /large- scale) has a pronounced co-occurrence with “no ” and often represents a “quantity concept” and Group 2 (e.g., fumei /unclear, byodo /equal, ishitsu /alien) is a co-occurring group for both “na ” and “no ” and often represents a “relational concept”. Group 3 (e.g., fukuzatsu /complex, yakkai /bothersome, shinmitsu /close) has a pronounced co-occurrence with “na ” and often represents a “concept of event”. One-way analysis of variance confirmed a statistically significant difference in cluster number (F (2,274)=3.873, p =.002).