An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute:
A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/
HTML Version(1997)
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II.2.12 A Descriptive Study on the Meaning and Uses
of Japanese Verbs
(Report 43, 1972. 761 pages)
The purpose of this report was to give a detailed
description of the meaning and uses of modern Japanese
verbs. The description differs from that given in ordinary
dictionaries in the following ways: (1) it was based on a
great number of examples, and (2) rather than dealing with
each verb in isolation, a large number of verbs were analyzed
within the semantic system, i.e., the goal was a systematic
description of verbs.
The examples given here number in the range of 450,000.
They are derived from 52 modern literary works; 24
scientific reports, editorials and essays; 90 magazines
published in 1956; and 13 cultural reviews (1953-1954).
PART I Description of Semantic Features: We described the
distinctive features in Japanese and the word groups,
synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms, that were distinguished by
these features. The following features were considered:
1. subject, 2. object, 3. property of actions, 4.
environment, 5. result, 6. intention, 7. cause, 8. value,
9. others.
PART II Description of Some Verbs: A detailed description of
12 verbs (AGARU, 'go up'; NOBORU, 'climb'; AGERU,
'raise'; UKU, 'X floats'; UKABU, 'X floats Y'; DERU, 'go
out'; AKERU, 'open'; NOBIRU, 'stretch'; NOMU, 'drink'; KUU,
'eat'; HAKARU, 'measure'; YOMU, 'read') and a group of verbs
related to sensory perception is given.
PART III Relation between Meaning and Other
Characteristics of Verbs:
(1) The Meaning and Grammatical Characteristics of Verbs: We
discussed the relation between the lexical meaning of verbs and
the grammatical categories of aspect, voice, etc., and
described syntactically corresponding verbs such as A GA B NI KATU
--><-- B GA A NI MAKERU, and verbs which have two or more
synonymous sentence patterns such as A GA B NI MITIRU--><-- B GA A
DE MITIRU.
(2) The Meaning of Verbs and Stylistic Characteristics:
Here we showed that verbs of higher (bookish) style are apt to
express large, official and abstract events, while verbs of
lower (vulgar) style often express rude behaviours.
MIYAZIMA Tatuo directed this research.
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