open access

https://doi.org/10.14943/106657

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/89066

Reconstruction of Original Data on Similarity between Word Forms in Ainu Dialects : Approaching the Researcher's Unwritten Judgment and Thoughts

日本語

数理人文学

2023-03-20

Japan Association of Northern Language Studies

Northern Language Studies

13

213-246

In this paper, we added linguistic insight to a preliminary study of Ono’s (2020b) algorithm and identified the 110 words of the basic Ainu vocabulary, which was used in the cluster analysis of Ainu dialects in Asai (1974). We also revealed some of the information on which word forms were judged to be similar and which lexical items were excluded from the calculation. In Ainu, Asai (1974) proposed a “major division” of the Hokkaido dialects, the Sakhalin dialects, and the northern Kuril dialects, which used the dialect data of Hattori and Chiri’s (1960) basic vocabulary. His classification continues to be referred to today, but Asai’s detailed “minor division” from the three categories is at odds with the intuition of Ainu language researchers (see Tamura (1988)). However, in order to examine the classification of Ainu dialects proposed by Asai (1974), it is necessary to read his difficult statistical paper. It was most difficult to identify 110 of the 200 basic lexical items that Asai (1974) supposedly used in his calculations. Only recently Ono’s (2020b) algorithm was able to identify some of the 110 items, and also pointed out that there were calculation errors in Asai (1974). In other words, it is possible to change the results of Asai’s (1974) dialect classification simply by identifying all 110 words and recalculating them. Therefore, this study identifies Asai’s (1974) 110 lexical items in order to consider and examine the classification of Ainu dialects.

紀要論文

Version of Record

2185-7121

AA12516968