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This is where Western and Japanese linguistics show their biggest difference. The former has a tendency to try making heavy generalizations (finding the univers
by tasogare 5y ago
This is where Western and Japanese linguistics show their biggest difference. The former has a tendency to try making heavy generalizations (finding the universal properties of language/s) and prove it by crafting a few examples fitted for the task (peak armchair linguistics). In the latter, a huge amount of data is collected. I've seen at library a book with hundred maps, relatively precise, about the fine variation in Japanese dialect. It's however sometimes lacking explanation. So both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses and I think that more ground breaking word can be done if relying on works from the two traditions.
- simiones 5y agoI don't think this is a difference between "Western" linguistics and Japanese linguistics. Collecting examples with relatively little explanation is traditional linguistics as it was practiced academically in Europe and Japan and probably most other places as well. You had etymology, and grammar, and many many examples for each. However, modern/computational linguistics has started asking new questions that were simply not considered in traditional linguistics: why and how do the rules of grammar arise? How are they learned by infants? Why do human beings use language at all? How are human languages different from animal communication? For many such questions, looking at hundreds of regional variations of certain words or grammar rules is not particularly helpful, unfortunately, though there is some work that was done based on that as well.