An Analysis on the Linguistic Structure of Western Music Theory Terms in Japanese

Abstract

The aim of the present thesis is to conduct a linguistic analysis of the Western music theory terminology in Japanese with focus on word types (or “strata”) and the semantic relation between components within compound words. The terminology of this field is relatively new to Japan as most of the terms were created in the Meiji period to translate the new concepts of Western music imported to Japan at the time. In the present study, technical terms were selected from a musical grammar textbook and analyzed based on the framework of Yamaguchi (2007). The results showed that the dominant word type was Sino-Japanese (漢語kango) kanji compound words, and the dominant semantic relation pattern between the components in the compounds was where the first component modifies the second. Furthermore, the studies of Zhu (1998, 2011) has provided further information, leading the present study to conjecture that strata proportions could be roughly similar for the terminology of all fields that were introduced to Japan around the Meiji period, although internal semantic relationships within compound words may show greater contrasts between the different fields.