Lexical variation in Japanese dialects revisited: Geostatistic and dialectometric analysis

Péter Jeszenszky,Keiji Yano,Yoshinobu Hikosaka

doi:10.5194/ica-abs-1-148-2019

Abstract

Abstract. Since the end of the 19th century in Japan, the official language policy enforced using Standard Japanese, based on the variety spoken in Tokyo (formerly Edo), in all official situations and in schools. Since then, Japanese dialects have been dwindling and ‘flattening’ (i.e., they retain less regional variation). Nevertheless, differences of language varieties keep being important topics and they reinforce the feeling of belonging and group formation in Japan, similarly to most languages with dialects. This study explores the spatial patterns in Japanese lexical variation based on digitised dialectal survey data (using the Linguistic Atlas of Japan) and presents first results of a dialectometric analysis, quantifying a number of factors assumed to affect lexical variation in Japanese.

Highlights

This preliminary study uses digitised and publicly available data from the Linguistic Atlas of Japan (LAJ), provided by Yasuo Kumagai at the National Institute of Japanese Language and Literature (NINJAL)
With the recent digitisation of the Linguistic Atlas of Japan (LAJ), in this study we focus on the research gaps of the 1) survey site level dialectometric analysis of Japanese dialect data, 2) the associations across dialectal features, 3) the geostatistical account for dialect areas and 4) the discovery of the effects of some historical and geographical factors on the variation
At the beginning of the dialectometric analysis of the lexical data, first we discovered the associations across the dialectal variants used

Summary

Introduction

With the recent digitisation of the Linguistic Atlas of Japan (LAJ), in this study we focus on the research gaps of the 1) survey site level dialectometric analysis of Japanese dialect data, 2) the associations across dialectal features, 3) the geostatistical account for dialect areas and 4) the discovery of the effects of some historical and geographical factors on the variation. Based on the 37 variables used, two smaller clusters are associated with variations in the southern archipelago of Okinawa and the large central cluster represents the standard variants, usually found spread across large areas in the main island Honshu.

Results

Conclusion