This paper presents results of a quantitative diachronic analysis of how abbreviations are used in modern written Japanese. “Asahi Newspaper Corpus” texts (23 years) were used to observe quantitative relations between abbreviations and original long words. As a result, 4 types of relations (tendencies) were found
.  1. Abbreviations are now used as main variants in priority to long words (“risutora” / “risutorakutyaringu”).
 2. Abbreviations replace their full variants gradually (“kombini” / “kombiniensu sutoa”).
 3. Abbreviations are used more frequently, than before, but still do not replace the long word (“keitai” / “keitai denwa”).
 4. Abbreviation appearance frequency increases and decreases irregularly. (“supakon” / “su:pa: kompyu:ta:”, “to:shin” / “to:shi shintaku”).
  The above examples demonstrate peculiarities of abbreviation use in newspaper register. In some cases abbreviations like “risutora” show similar tendencies as in colloquial usage, while low usage ratio of “keitai” reflects tendencies usually seen in written language. At the same time, “kombini” reveals peculiarities of language use in different sections of newspaper (“Opinion” etc). Changes in usage frequency of “supakon” and “to:shin” are relevant to topicality degree of their referents.
  We managed to examine only 4 types of relations. This research requires more abbreviations to be analyzed in order for the abbreviation use typology to be approved.

抄録全体を表示

The Frequency Dictionary of Old Japanese records frequencies of every word in 14 Japanese classical texts. In this paper, using the data in this dictionary, we try to find for each text words that are characteristic to that text as compared to the other 13 texts, that is, we identify words that are both used frequently in a given text and infrequently in all others. In order to find characteristic words statistically, we used the log-likelihood ratio to calculate the exact degree of characteristicness for each word. For each text the set of 20 words with the highest degree (the characteristic set) and the set of 20 words with the lowest degree (which we provisionally name “anti- characteristic”) are presented in this report. The 14 texts are characterized on the basis of their respective characteristic and anti-characteristic word sets. We further confirm the influence of text-length on calculating degrees of characteristicness, and carry out an experiment to decrease its influence on these calculations.

抄録全体を表示