The Special Lexicon of the Secret Language of Thieves in Japan between the Edo and Showa Periods

Abstract

Drawing on a corpus of 300 words, this paper analyses the linguistic characteristics of the special lexicon of the secret language (ingo) used by thieves in Japan between the Edo and Showa periods. A total of 189 words are illustrated to demonstrate how the secret language of thieves can be described in terms of the three strategies used to create this special lexicon: 1) semantic changes introduced into the pre-existing Japanese lexicon; 2) lexical innovations; and 3) morpho-phonological modifications of the pre-existing Japanese lexicon. Strategies used in the creation of the special lexicon are examined in order to determine how the strategies employed in thieves’ ingo conform to or deviate from the strategies used in modernising the lexicon of Standard Japanese. This paper also examines how morphological processes utilised in the special lexicon of thieves’ secret language interact with Japanese phonology, and concludes that the mora is an indispensable unit for the processes of truncation, hypocoristic formation and reduplication, while the syllable is an indispensable unit for the process of metathesis. Finally, data analysis reveals that truncation and metathesis work at a level which ignores morpheme boundaries, and operate instead at the level of the mora and syllable respectively.