ANALYSIS OF LEXICON IN JAPANESE ADULT AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE. Comparison of Kawauso and Serohiki no Gauche

Abstract

This paper investigates the usage of Japanese vocabulary in two different texts: Kawauso (The Otter) by Kuniko Mukōda and Serohiki no Gauche (Gauche the cellist) by Kenji Miyazawa. Japanese vocabulary is commonly divided into three main lexical classes: Native Japanese words (NJ, 和語), Sino-Japanese Words (SJ, 漢語) and foreign loan words (FL, 外来語). In addition, many scholars consider onomatopoeia as a fourth lexical class. It has therefore been considered as such in this study. The framework for this study is based on the work of Yamaguchi (2007) and the frequency of appearance of the four lexical classes in each of the texts is measured and compared between each other. The results show that with respect to the total number of words in each respective text, Mukōda more frequently used NJ, SJ than Miyazawa while FL was used more frequently by Miyazawa. Both authors however used many hybrid words, which were not included in this study. Nonetheless, when comparing the number of appearance of NJ, SJ and FL with respect to the appearance of those three categories in the texts, the results show very similar results between both texts. Finally, onomatopoeia was used infrequently, with Miyazawa using much more than Mukōda.