Abstract
For dialectology, descriptive studies, dictionaries, linguistic maps, corpus materials, sound data and field works can be used as the core materials of academic analysis. The characteristics of each kind of material are reviewed in this paper. Since descriptive studies include dialectal data, they have been used as the materials for succeeding studies. A lot of dialectal dictionaries had been edited by many non-professional dialectologists in Japan. They have offered huge sets of data for dialectology. In Japan, over 400 volumes of linguistic atlases have been published. Japanese geolinguistics leads this field in the world. Corpus materials and sound data of many dialects have been released in Japan. They have been used as materials for grammatical and phonological studies. Generally speaking, in Japanese dialectology, materials for the studies have been obtained through field work by dialectologists themselves. The data of dialectological field work are analyzed and the results are published as papers. In some cases original data have been opened. The data can be used for analyses from other different view points. It is an important process to examine methods of construction of these materials and the value of them to verify the bases of dialectology, especially at the current time when the dialects themselves are going the way of the classics. It appears that dialects data have a nature which is not written language, and the materials of dialectology have been based on limited information. Through the afore-mentioned review, the problems and the directions of dialectology are clarified. Dialectologists should continue to make data of dialects with attention to the nature and the limitations of dialect data.
