Permalink :  http://hdl.handle.net/2115/45577

KEYWORDS : コーパス; 学会抄録論文; 概数をあらわす語; 約; ほぼ; およそ

This paper investigates the usage of words expressing approximation. Careful observation based on an academic proceeding corpus suggests the following findings. 1) The following seven words expressing approximation are observed in the corpus : yaku, hobo, oomune, ooyoso, oyoso, daitai and ookata. They can be classified into three groups by frequency : frequent words (yaku, hobo), relatively infrequent words (oomune, ooyoso, oyoso), and rarely used words (daitai, ookata). 2) Both yaku and hobo are used frequently, but they differ in the kind of words which commonly follow them: in the vast majority of cases, yaku is used with numbers and hobo with non-numbers. 3) Number words which collocate with yaku include hansuu, hansei, hanbun. 4) Over half the combination of hobo + number carry the meaning of a limit. This meaning is also observed in combinations of hobo + non-number 5) Combinations of hobo + non-number are often used in sentences with the contextual meaning 'be in a certain condition accruing to some criterion'. These findings could not be arrived at through the intuition of native speaker or Japanese dictionaries, and they provide useful information for acceptable Japanese production.

FULL TEXT :  PDF