The Japanese Pithecanthropus: Interpreting Japanese Unfamiliar Compounds

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_13405
dc.title	The Japanese Pithecanthropus: Interpreting Japanese Unfamiliar Compounds. Takao Suzuki’s Model of Conceptual Combination Through kun-Glossing
dc.contributor.author	dalla Chiesa Simone
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-orientale/2023/1/the-japanese-pithecanthropus-interpreting-japanese/
dc.description.abstract	With ‘kun-glossing’, I refer to the method of interpreting unfamiliar compounds proposed by Takao Suzuki (1926-2021), a well-known Japanese scholar. Readers assign a semantic gloss to each constituent kanji, combine those meanings into a new, complex concept and attempt to validate the result(s) encyclopedically. In this essay I verify kun-glossing’s processing power by applying it to eleven compounds, beginning with enjin 猿人 (Pithecanthropus). I conclude that this method is only effective in interpreting words that are structured as descriptions, as the neoclassical compounds of science often are, and cannot be considered a universal method to infer the meaning of novel compounds.
dc.relation.ispartof	Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 59 \| June 2023
dc.issued	2023-08-29
dc.dateAccepted	2023-06-20
dc.dateSubmitted	2023-05-19
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2385-3042
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2023/01/023
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Appositive compounds
dc.subject	Binomens
dc.subject	Compounding
dc.subject	Conceptual combination
dc.subject	Ernst Haeckel
dc.subject	Japanese compounds
dc.subject	Kanji
dc.subject	Neoclassical compounds
dc.subject	Onomasiological approach
dc.subject	Takao Suzuki

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

The Japanese Pithecanthropus: Interpreting Japanese Unfamiliar Compounds

Takao Suzuki’s Model of Conceptual Combination Through kun-Glossing

Simone dalla Chiesa Università degli Studi di Milano La Statale, Italia

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abstract

With ‘kun-glossing’, I refer to the method of interpreting unfamiliar compounds proposed by Takao Suzuki (1926-2021), a well-known Japanese scholar. Readers assign a semantic gloss to each constituent kanji, combine those meanings into a new, complex concept and attempt to validate the result(s) encyclopedically. In this essay I verify kun-glossing’s processing power by applying it to eleven compounds, beginning with enjin 猿人 (Pithecanthropus). I conclude that this method is only effective in interpreting words that are structured as descriptions, as the neoclassical compounds of science often are, and cannot be considered a universal method to infer the meaning of novel compounds.

Published

Aug. 29, 2023

Accepted

June 20, 2023

Submitted

May 19, 2023

Language

Keywords: Ernst Haeckel • Appositive compounds • Compounding • Takao Suzuki • Conceptual combination • Japanese compounds • Neoclassical compounds • Onomasiological approach • Binomens • Kanji

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2023/01/023

Copyright: © 2023 Simone dalla Chiesa. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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