“羅葡日辞書” (1595, originally titled “Dictionarium Latino-Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum”) was published in Japan by the Society of Jesus. The Latin entry words were based on the Latin dictionary “Calepinus,” and the interpretation was given in Portuguese and Japanese. “羅葡日辞書” has long been known as a lexical resource for medieval and early modern Japanese, but its use in research on the history of Japanese vocabulary has been limited as there are no Japanese translations of Latin and Portuguese.

I extracted approximately 100 unknown words from the Japanese vocabulary in “羅葡日辞書,” translated them with reference to Portuguese, and identified their meanings. Because these vocabularies include words related to grammatical and phonological studies as well as lexical studies, multiple studies can be derived from these vocabularies. Moreover, since the analysis of the Portuguese in “羅葡日辞書” is inadequate, I would like to advance it through international joint research with Portuguese and Brazilian researchers.

The Japanese transitions in “羅葡日辞書” often include both Kango (Chinese compound words) and Wago (native Japanese words). As explained in the legend of the book, this feature results from the abundance of the Japanese vocabulary, but it is a noteworthy feature that there are many compound Wago words in unknown words. This is because the interpretation is provided by new compounding Japanese words with a high degree of transparency in meaning to identify Kango homonyms that are difficult to properly identify in Roman alphabet writing. Indicating the guidance to the notation of each Kanji by the Japanese Wakun (Japanese reading of Kanji) is ingenuous in that it anticipates the method in “日葡辞書” (1603-04, Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary: originally titled “Vocabulario da Lingoa de Iapam”). We can consider the system of specifying Kanji notation by Roman alphabet writing in “羅葡日辞書” as one of the foundations for “日葡辞書.”

Vocabularies in Western learning materials were originally unpublished manuscripts compiled by 17th-century Dutch-Japanese interpreters in Nagasaki and had the additional role of acting as dictionaries. At the end of the 18th century, however, the roles of vocabularies began to change through the publication of Haruma Wage (波留麻和解, a Dutch-Japanese dictionary) in 1796 and of Ruiju Kōmōgoyaku (類聚紅毛語訳, a Japanese-Dutch vocabulary) in 1798. This paper illustrates the roles of the vocabularies compiled in the 18th and 19th centuries, based on textual examinations, focusing on their relationships with and differences from dictionaries published in the same period.

This paper aims to identify the original language of the translation of the Gospel of John, which was published in Singapore in 1837, before the end of the Edo period in Japan.

Yohannnesu no Tayori Yorokobi is a Japanese translation of the Gospel of John, the last of the four gospels in the New Testament. It is said to be the oldest existing Japanese translation of the Bible, along with the Japanese translations of the three Epistles of John in the Catholic Epistles of the New Testament. Gützlaff, a missionary from Prussia, translated these books. According to previous studies, Gützlaff translated the Gospel of John into Japanese from the English or German translation. However, this paper compares the proper nouns that appear in the text of the Tenri Library's copy of the Yohannnesu no Tayori Yorokobi with those of the King James Version (English), Luther's Translation (German), and the Textus Receptus (Greek). This study shows that it is highly possible that Gützlaff translated these proper nouns directly from the Greek text.

This paper introduces the Yasashii-Nihongo (YN) initiative as an example of the potential of Japanese language research to relate to social trends. In the declining population society that Japan faces in the near future, it is essential to accept foreigners appropriately, and YN has an aspect as a needed language policy for this purpose. I pointed out the significance of YN for native Japanese speakers, who are the majority in the Japanese society, in improving their ability to communicate in Japanese. Through a discussion of how information should be provided from specialists to non-specialists, the concept of Plain Japanese (PJ), or “YN for native speakers of Japanese,” was presented, and it was argued that PJ can contribute not only to the internationalization of the Japanese language but also to the internationalization of Japanese society. Finally, from these perspectives, Endo and Watanabe (2021) and Hayashi (2013) were cited as works that Japanese language researchers should refer to when engaging with social movements.

In contrast to previous research that focused primarily on confirmation and agreement request functions of negative questions in made-up or written sentences, this research investigates the form, frequency and function of negative questions and related forms in a video- and audio-recorded corpus of spontaneous conversations at Dairy Taster Brunches. Expanding Tanomura's (1988) de wa nai ka₂, the object of study is uses of P nai, P zyan and P daroo (P= predicate) with rising and non-rising intonation that assert rather than negate P. The analysis focuses on 1) the forms and frequency of P nai, P zyan and P daroo, and 2) the functions of these forms in conversational interaction. Statistical analysis shows that P nai? was used more by younger than older people and both P nai? and P desyoo? were used more by women than men. Young women used A (adjectival) ku nai? the most, including uses for strong assertion, and there were cases in utterance sequences where young women responded to P nai? with P nai?. In contrast, older women often responded to P nai? with back channel utterances to show agreement. A list of utterance and discourse functions was obtained from interviews with Japanese native speakers about the functions of actual uses of P nai, P zyan and P daroo. Then after a training workshop, the 9 trainees were given the video and transcription of one each of the conversations in the corpus and were asked to choose the function(s) that applied to each of the uses of these forms. Results showed that depending on the conversational development and position within utterance sequences, P nai, P zyan and P daroo were used for one or more of the following utterance functions (question, assertion, agreement request), and discourse functions (precondition, reason, topic presentation, objection).

This paper consists of two parts. In the first part (sections 1 to 3), based on my experience as editor and reviewer of English-language linguistic publications, I try to highlight a number of differences potentially found in linguistic writing compared to papers and books written in Japanese. While standards may vary considerably depending on the publication and individual editors and reviewers, I try to identify some features that may improve the odds for a paper written in English to get accepted.

In the second part (section 4), I provide an overview of a system of transliteration, morpheme analysis and glossing of Japanese example sentences that might be helpful if applied consistently.

This article investigates the properties of the Japanese particle “made”, used to express isolation, or the concept of “only”. Additionally, it delves into the evolutionary process of how this grammatical function was established. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the isolative usage of “made” could be appended to both nouns and clauses, constraining objects as well as situations. It is primarily positioned at the predicate, indicating a limitation to the lowest element on a scale that arranges elements sequentially.

In Early Middle Japanese, “made” was not coupled with the particles “ni” and “wo”, nor did it find its place in the predicate position. However, instances of such usage started appearing in Late Middle Japanese. Until the 14th century, the majority of predicate usages were affixed after nouns and demonstratives. However, from the 15th century onwards, there was a significant increase in examples where “made” was appended after clauses.

The isolative usage of “made” originated from its function expressing limitation. In this context, the element in question becomes the upper limit on the scale, and all preceding elements are included. In contrast, when expressing isolation, only the element in question is considered as the limit, with no other elements included. The limitation usage is frequently found in the predicate position, and the exclusivity implied by this usage is emphasized, resulting in the evolution of the isolative usage of “made”.

This study examined the changes in the syntactic constraints of clauses in Japanese that express attendant circumstances based on a survey of -te, -tutu, and -zu clauses. In ancient Japanese, [subject, unaccusative verb] and [object, transitive verb] clauses are found to express attendant circumstances. In modern Japanese however, only the [object, transitive verb] clauses are considered to be a natural expression. Based on the result of the survey, this study demonstrates that [subject, unaccusative verb] -te clauses were continued to be used in Late Middle Japanese, whereas -tutu and -zu clauses were observed only in Early Middle Japanese. These changes in syntactic constraints may reflect the loss of the characteristics of an active language in Japanese.

This study clarifies the following two points about dewa kanau maji > ide(wa) kanawazu in Middle Japanese:

1) When it first appeared in the early medieval period, it was [condition + impossible], with “dewa” defining the condition and “kanau maji” indicating impossibility. However, it changed into a compound auxiliary verb that expresses a [necessary condition]. A [necessary condition] has a goal state, but it was then expanded in meaning to an [unconditional necessity]. The meaning was further expanded to an [inevitability] in the late medieval period.

2) Various morphological changes occurred in the late medieval period, such as dewa changing into idewa, a non-conjectural form appearing as a negative particle; the appearance of idewa termination; and of ide kanawazu and idemo kanawazu. The background of these phenomena is surmised. Furthermore, these phenomena were interpreted as reflecting a gradual process by which dewa kanau maji > ide(wa) kanawazu went from being viewed as a type of (i)dewa conditional statement to not being viewed as such.

The Miyakoan dialects, spoken in the Miyako Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, have two types of regular verbs; however, the identification of irregular verbs varies among dialects depending on their respective grammatical descriptions. Previous studies have not investigated the potential unique characteristics that may be exclusively associated with irregular verbs, but are not present in regular verbs. Moreover, the use of multiple stems as a criterion for identifying irregular verbs varies across studies. Additionally, applying the conventional definitions of the stem, the (a)thematic stem, and the (a)thematic form, as well as the traditional analysis of the structure of inflected verb forms, to the identification of irregular verbs in the Hisamatsu dialect leads to several problematic issues.

This paper proposes a redefinition of the stem, the (a)thematic stem, and the (a)thematic form, based on primary data from the Hisamatsu dialect, and analyzes the structure of inflected verb forms as follows:

[[athemetic stem(-thematic vowel)](+morphophonological rule)]-inflectional affix

The combination of an athematic stem and a thematic vowel is referred to as an “underlying (a)thematic form.” Then the application of morphophonological rules to the “underlying (a)thematic form” produces a “surface (a)thematic form.” Finally, adding an inflectional affix to the “surface (a)thematic form” yields an “inflected verb form.”

Based on the above structure, regular verbs are defined as those that fulfill all four established conditions, while verbs that have exceptions for at least one of the conditions are classified as irregular verbs.