An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute: A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/ HTML Version(1997)

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II.2.8 Word List by Semantic Principles

(Source 6, 1964. 362 pages)
This book is a semantic listing of 32,600 words of modern Japanese. They are classified into four classes, 12 sections, and 798 articles. An index in the order of the kana syllabary is appended. An asterisk is affixed to approximately 7,000 words; these are the most frequently used words according to a survey of the ninety recent magazines listed in Report 21. This list was made to serve as fundamental source material for determining the basic Japanese vocabulary. This list may also be used as a list of synonyms, for the selection of words for compositions, and for a contrastive study between languages. The method of classification applied to this book was the advanced one which was used in the study of the vocabulary of women's magazines and cultural reviews made by the Institute (See p. 27 ff.). It is rather original, different from the classifications of any other thesaurus in the past. The outline of the system is as follows: 1. Nouns. 1.1 Abstract Relations affairs, causes and results, existence, power, action and change, time, space, form, quantity, etc. 1.2 Human Beings- Subjects of Human Behaviour oneself and others, men and women, family, class, professions, society, places of social behaviour, organizations, bodies, etc. 1.3 Human Behaviour- Spirit and Action senses and emotions, facial expressions, will, learning, thinking, meanings, principles, seeing and hearing, language and communication, creation, culture and life, daily life, personality and behaviour, friendship and struggle, control, education and treatment, financial affairs, industry, household affairs, handicrafts, etc. 1.4 Products and Equipment goods, materials, clothes, food, residence, receptacles, cutlery, toys, machines, vehicles, roads and other civil engineering services, etc. 1.5 Natural Beings and Natural Phenomena light, color, sound, smell, taste, substance, weather conditions, change of matter, astronomical and geographical items, plants, animals, bodies of animals, physiological phenomena. 2. Verbs 3. Adjectives and Adverbs These last classes, 2 and 3, were grouped into three sections, almost the same as the three sections of Class 1: .1 Abstract Relations, .3 Spirit and Action, .5 Natural Phenomena. 4. Others connectives, interjections, words of calling and response. This study was mainly made by HAYASI Oki.

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