The National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU) in Japan

Makiro TANAKA

National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics

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National Institutes for the Humanities(NIHU)

• The NIHU consists of six institutes– National Institute for Japanese Language

and Linguistics – National Institute of Japanese Literature– National Museum of Japanese History– International Research Center for Japanese

Studies – National Museum of Ethnology– Research Institute for Humanity

and NatureAHRC/NIHU Memorandum of Understanding AHRC-funded scholars have access to the world-class facilities that exist in NIHU facilities.

NIHU belongs to the Inter-University Research Institute Corporation .

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Inter-University Research Institute Corporation

• Established pursuant to the National University Corporation Law with the aim of founding inter-university research institutes.

• There are four corporations:– National Institutes for the Humanities – National Institutes of Natural Sciences – High Energy Accelerator Research Organization – Research Organization of Information and Systems

• These institutes conduct collaborative research and promote advancement of Japanese scholarship and research.

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Six Institutes of NIHUAbbreviation Institute Academic Study Location Established Staff

NINJALNational Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics

Linguistics, Language Education

Tokyo 1948 51

NIJLNational Institute of Japanese Literature

Literature, Archives

Tokyo 1972 67

NMJHNational Museum of Japanese History

History, Archaeology, Folklore

Chiba 1981 85

IRCJSInternational Research Center for Japanese Studies

Culture, Religion, Philosophy

Kyoto 1987 68

RIHNResearch Institute for Humanity and Nature

Environment Sciences

Kyoto 2001 53

NMENational Museum of Ethnology

Ethnology, Anthropology,

Osaka 1979 102

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The National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL)

(established in 1948) • Linguistic theory and structure

– Grammar/syntax, phonetics/phonology, lexicon/morphology, characters/orthography meaning/pragmatics/discourse

• Language change and variation– Dialect, historical change, social variation

• Teaching and second language acquisition• Cross-linguistic studies• Corpus Linguistics

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National Institute of Japanese Literature(established in 1972)

• Research of Japanese literature– Collection , organization and

preservation of literary texts– Collaborative research

• Resource Sharing– Bibliographic research of

original texts– Reproducing original texts in

microfilm or digital form– Database access

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National Museum of Japanese History(established in 1981)

• Research of Japanese history– History, Archaeology, Folklore– Database development

• Museum– Collection, Organizing,

Storage, Investigation, Dissemination

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International Research Center for Japanese Studies

(established in 1987) • Research– International,

interdisciplinary, and comprehensive research on Japanese culture

• International cooperation– International symposia

overseas

– International workshop

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Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (established in 2001)

• Research– Toward the solution of global

environmental problems – Based on the recognition that

those problems originated in human culture

• Social outreach– Kyoto forum on environmental

wisdom and culture– The Earth Forum Kyoto and the

Earth Hall of Fame Kyoto Award

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National Museum of Ethnology(established in 1979)

• Research of Ethnology– Cultural anthropology,

Ethnology– Database development

• Museum– Regional exhibitions – Cross-cultural exhibitions– Special exhibition based

on the latest research

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AHRC Scholarship Research Assistants who Studied in NINJAL

• Dr. Stephen Wright Horn (2010.11～2011.1)Research Assistant Oriental Institute, University of Oxford

Theme: Tagging noun phrases for grammatical role in a pre-modern Japanese language corpus

• Dr. Kerri L Russell (2011.3～2011.5)Research Assistant Oriental Institute, University of Oxford

Theme: Lexical representation of argument realization patterns in pre-modern Japanese

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The VSARPJ project in the Faculty of Oriental Studies in University of Oxford

funded by AHRC (2009.1-2013.9)

“Verb semantics and argument realization in pre-modern Japanese” (VSARPJ)Principal Investigator: Professor Bjarke Frellesvig

This is cutting edge research on Japanese history.

Dr. Horn and Dr. Russell are working on this project.

In this project, an electronic corpus of pre-modern Japanese is compiled.

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Japanese Corpora Compiled by NINJAL

• Balanced corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese （BCCWJ） 100 million words– We published this corpus in 2011.– This corpus is comparable to the British National

Corpus （BNC） 100 million words.– This corpus is the first balanced corpus of Japanese

language.• Historical corpus of Japanese language

– We began designing this corpus from 2009.– We will embark on compilation of this corpus in 2013.

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Oxford Corpus and NINJAL Corpus

Oxford Pre-Modern Japanese Corpus

NINJAL Historical Japanese Corpus

Development period

2009-20122009-2013(design)2013-(development)

PurposeStudy of verb semantics and argument realization

Study of the history of the Japanese language

MaterialsLiteral texts regarded as recordings of spoken language in 8c-16c

Diverse genres, including blend of Japanese and classical Chinese(Kanbun) from 8c to 20c

Characterization AlphabetMixture of Chinese characters and Japanese phonetic characters

MarkupMorphology and syntactic structure

Morphological analysis

LexiconSemantic information for individual words

Morphological information for individual words

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Dr. Horn’s Study

• Development– Oxford corpus and NINJAL corpus

• Technique– Using XML mark up

• Finding– Annotation of semantic roles and grammatical

roles – Discovering patterns of verb behavior in corpora– Anaphoric relations for referential expressions

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Dr. Russell’s Study

• Development– Lexicon for a diachronic corpus of Pre-modern

Japanese

• Technique– Using UniDic lexicon being developed by NINJAL

• Finding– Correspondences between UniDic and the lexicon

for the Oxford corpus– Lexical entries to reflect diachronic changes

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NINJAL Research Meetings•NINJAL Collaborative Research Project Meetings and Symposia

Each project group holds a meeting or symposium several times a year at which interim reports on the collaborative research are presented.

•The NINJAL ColloquiumA series to which distinguished domestic and foreign researchers are invited as lecturers to talk about cutting-edge research findings.

•The NINJAL SalonA periodical meeting to provide opportunity for researchers working at the institute to introduce their work to colleagues and exchange information.

Dr. Horn and Dr. Russell made presentations in these meetings.

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NINJAL facilities (1)

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The front of NINJAL The courtyard of NINJAL

NINJAL has many open spaces NINJAL library

NINJAL facilities (2)

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Panoramic landscape of guest house Private room of guest house

Conversation lounge of guest house Mt. FUJI from NINJAL