JPN494: Japanese Language and LinguisticsJPN520: Advanced Japanese Language and Linguistics

Introduction08/22/2006

Big Questions

What is Japanese (What is the Japanese language)?

What is (a) language?What is linguistics?

Language as a tool

To learn a language as your second language is one way to understand it. → But there are many others!

Why do you learn a language?to communicate with people to know more about other culturesfor ease of business for fun

… Language is a tool.

Language as an object of study (1)

Properties of a language itself - How sounds are produced and combined

(phonetics & phonology; 音声学・音韻論 ) - How words are structured

(morphology; 形態論 )- How sentences are structured

(syntax; 統語論 )- How discourses (or texts) are structured

(pragmatics, stylistics, discourse studies; 語用論 , 文体論 , 談話研究 )

Language as an object of study (1)

- How can the meanings of individual expressions 　　 be represented? How can meanings of complex expressions be calculated based on those of simpler expressions?(semantics; 意味論 )- How do languages change? (historical linguistics; 歴史言語学 )

General Linguistics vs. Japanese, English, … Linguistics

Language as an object of study (1)

Why do we study them? Practical reasons:

language teaching (pedagogy), machine translation, man-machine interface (phone banking, Google), …

Above all: Knowledge about how (a) language works gives us lots of information about how human mind works

Language as an object of study (2)

Interactions between language and culture/society – sociolinguistics; 社会言語学– geographical linguistics/dialectology;地理言語学 /方言学

– anthropological linguistics/cultural linguistics (?)言語人類学 /文化言語学

Language as an object of study (2)

Why do we study them? politics of language (language of education, official/national language, etc.), revitalization/documentation of endangered languages,

etc.

Language as an object of study (3)

Interactions between language and human mind– psycholinguistics; 心理言語学– neuro-linugistics; 神経言語学– applied linguistics; 応用言語学– language acquisition studies; 言語習得研究

Language as an object of study (3)

Why do we study them? treatment of aphasia (language disorders), effective language teaching,more effective communication (e.g. language of advertisement, propaganda), etc.

The list goes on …– philosophy of language (strong connection to

formal semantics)– mathematical linguistics (connection to formal

syntax)– computational linguistics …

Language as an object of study (summary)

Properties of individual languages & language in general

Interactions between language and culture/society Interactions between language and human mind

→ An individual language (e.g. Japanese or a dialect thereof) can be studied from various directions