# Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century - 2020. Part II

Yannis Haralambous

► To cite this version:

Yannis Haralambous. Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century - 2020. Part II. G21C 2020: Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, Jun 2020, Paris, France. 5, Fluxus Editions, 2021, Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, 9782957054978. 10.36824/2020-graf2. hal-03161397

HAL Id: hal-03161397

https://hal.science/hal-03161397

Submitted on 2 Aug 2021

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
GRAPHOLINGUISTICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS

# Grapholinguistics
in the 21st Century—2020

/gβafematik/
Proceedings

June 17-19, 2020
Yannis Haralambous (Ed.)

## Part II

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

Fluxus Editions
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>
Series Editor

Yannis Haralambous, IMT Atlantique & CNRS Lab-STICC, France

Series Editorial Committee

Gabriel Altmann†, formerly Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany

Jacques André, formerly IRISA, Rennes, France

Vlad Atanasiu, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland

Nicolas Ballier, Université de Paris, France

Kristian Berg, Universität Oldenburg, Germany

Chuck Bigelow, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA

Stephen Chrisomalis, Wayne State University, USA

Florian Coulmas, Universität Duisburg, Germany

Joseph Dichy, Université Lumière Lyon 2 & CNRS, Lyon, France

Christa Dürscheid, Universität Zürich, Switzerland

Martin Dürst, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan

Keisuke Honda, Imperial College and University of Oxford, UK

Shu-Kai Hsieh, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

Terry Joyce, Tama University, Japan

George A. Kiraz, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA

Mark Wilhelm Küster, Office des publications of the European Union, Luxembourg

Gerry Leonidas, University of Reading, UK

Dimitrios Meletis, Universität Zürich, Switzerland

Kamal Mansour, Monotype, USA

Klimis Mastoridis, University of Nicosia, Cyprus

Tom Mullaney, Stanford University, USA

Martin Neef, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany

J.R. Osborn, Georgetown University, USA

Cornelia Schindelin, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany

Virach Sornlertlamvanich, SICCT, Thammasat University, Thailand

Emmanuël Souchier, Université de la Sorbonne, Paris

Jürgen Spitzmüller, Universität Wien, Austria

Richard Sproat, Google, USA

Susanne Wehde, MRC Managing Research GmbH, Germany
Yannis Haralambous (Ed.)

Grapholinguistics in the 21st
Century

/gβafematik/

June 15-17, 2020 (online)

Proceedings

Part II

Fluxus Editions
Yannis Haralambous (Ed.). 2021. *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century. June 15-17, 2020. Proceedings* (Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, Vol. 5).
Brest: Fluxus Editions.

This title can be downloaded at:
http://fluxus-editions.fr/gla5.php

© 2021, The respective authors

Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISBN: 978-2-9570549-7-8

e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-9-2

ISSN: 2681-8566

e-ISSN: 2534-5192

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf2

Cover illustration: *Weapon*, in heptapod B language, courtesy of Wolfram
Companies (https://github.com/WolframResearch/Arrival-Movie-Live-
Coding). From the movie *Arrival* (2016) by Denis Villeneuve, inspired by
the short story Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life,” *Starflight*, Vol. 2, New
York: Tor Books, 1998.

Cover design and typesetting: Atelier Fluxus Virus

Main fonts: William Pro by Typotheque Type Foundry, Computer
Modern Typewriter by Donald E. Knuth, Source Han Serif
by Adobe Systems, Amiri by Khaled Hosny

Typesetting tools: XeLTEX, biblatex+biber (authoryear-icomp style), xindex, titlecaseconverter.com

Fluxus Editions
38 rue Émile Zola
29200 Brest, France
www.fluxus-editions.fr

Dépôt légal : février 2021

ηβκα
# Table of Contents

Preface ...................................................... ix

List of Participants at the Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century
2020 Conference .............................................. xi

## PART I

MARTIN NEEF. – The Written Utterance as a Core Concept in
Grapholinguistics ............................................ 1

MARTIN EVERTZ-RITTICH. – What Is a Written Word? And if So,
How Many? .................................................. 25

SVEN OSTERKAMP & GORDIAN SCHREIBER. – Challenging the Di-
chotomy Between Phonography and Morphography: Transi-
tions and Gray Areas ...................................... 47

STEFANO PRESUTTI. – The Interdependence Between Speech and
Writing. Towards a Greater Awareness ........................ 83

AMALIA E. GNANADESIKAN. – S₁: The Native Script Effect ....... 103

DIMITRIOS MELETIS. – On Being a Grapholinguist ............ 125

CORINNA SALOMON. – Comparative Perspectives on the Study of
Script Transfer, and the Origin of the Runic Script ......... 143

DANIEL HARBOUR. – Grammar Drives Writing System Evolution.
Lessons From the Birth of Vowels .......................... 201

SVEVA ELTI DI RODEANO. – Scripts in Contact: Transmission of
the First Alphabets ...................................... 223

DALMA VÉRY. – Mutable Imagination: Typography and Textual
Space in Print and Digital Layouts ........................ 241
<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>STEFANO PRESUTTI. – Graphemic Complexity for the New Romance Phonemes in Italian. Some Reflections</td>
      <td>755</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>VICTORIA FENDEL. – A Small Step for a Man, a Giant Leap for a People—The Coptic Language</td>
      <td>775</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>HELEN GIUNASHVILI. – Old Aramaic Script in Georgia</td>
      <td>787</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>LIUDMILA L. FEDOROVA. – On the Typology of Writing Systems</td>
      <td>805</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>PIERS KELLY. – The Naasioi Otomaung Alphabet of Bougainville. A Preliminary Sketch From Afar</td>
      <td>825</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>ROBERT M. SCHOCH &amp; TOMI S. MELKA. – A “Sacred Amulet from Easter Island—1885/6—”. Analyzing Enigmatic Glyphic Characters in the Context of the <i>rongorongo</i> Script</td>
      <td>847</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>HANA JEE, MONICA TAMARIZ &amp; RICHARD SHILCOCK. – Quantifying Sound-Graphic Systematicity. Application to Multiple Phonographic Orthographies</td>
      <td>905</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>LOH JIA SHENG COLIN &amp; FRANCESCO PERONO CACCIAFOCO. – A New Approach to the Decipherment of Linear A, Stage 2. Crypt-analysis and Language Deciphering: A “Brute Force Attack” on an Undeciphered Writing System</td>
      <td>927</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>ESTER SALGARELLA &amp; SIMON CASTELLAN. – SigLA: The Signs of Linear A. A Palæographical Database</td>
      <td>945</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>KEVIN DONNELLY. – Digitising Swahili in Arabic Script With <i>Andika!</i></td>
      <td>963</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>DUODUO XU. – A Semantic Index for a Dongba Script Database</td>
      <td>985</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Dominique Boutet, <i>In Memoriam</i></td>
      <td>1007</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>CLAIRE DANET, DOMINIQUE BOUTET†, PATRICK DOAN, CLAUDIA SAVINA BIANCHINI, ADRIEN CONTESSE, LÉA CHÈVREFILS, MORGANE RÉBULARD, CHLOÉ THOMAS &amp; JEAN-FRANÇOIS DAUPHIN. – Transcribing Sign Languages With TYPANNOT: The Typographic System That Retains and Displays Layers of Information</td>
      <td>1009</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>CLAUDIA S. BIANCHINI. – How to Improve Metalinguistic Awareness by Writing a Language Without Writing: Sign Languages and Signwriting</td>
      <td>1039</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>CHRISTIAN KOCH. – Language Identity Through Cyrillic Script. From Romanian to Moldovan by Automatic Transliteration in the Wikimoldia Project</td>
      <td>1067</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
Preface

The second edition of the *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century* conference was held online, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, on June 15–17, 2020. In these *Proceedings* are collected fourty-two contributions derived from oral or poster presentations.

The first five papers (Neef, Evertz-Rittich, Osterkamp & Schreiber, Pre-
sutti, and Gnanadesikan) contribute to the theoretical body of grapholin-
guistics, addressing core concepts: the written utterance, the written word,
phonography and morphography, the interdependence of speech and writ-
ing, and the native script effect. Offering a global perspective, the paper
by Meletis, author of the recently released *The nature of writing: A theory
of grapholinguistics*, discusses the activity of being a grapholinguist, its chal-
lenges and promises.

The common theme of the papers by Salomon, Harbour, and Elti di Ro-
deano is *beginnings*: script creation or transfer (inspired by the runic script);
the influence of grammar on writing system evolution and the birth of vow-
els; transmission of the first alphabets.

The next block of six papers deals with (typo)graphetics: Véry explores
textual space; Haralambous, Landragin & Handa study graphemic and gra-
phetic methods in speculative fiction; Wachendorff examines urban spaces
in the Ruhr area; Kulish gives a survey of nonstandard, “emotional,” punctu-
ation; Bergerausen & Huot-Marchand and Pierson present their font cre-
ation projects, respectively, “Missing scripts” and “PIM” (ancient monetary
inscriptions).

In the papers that follow, Neuman gives an account of spelling variation
in Modern Hebrew from a sociocultural point of view; Dürscheid provides us
with insight on the use of emojis in social media; Melka & Schoch investigate
the possibility of communication, be it visual or auditory, with unknown
intelligence/s.

The last paper of the first part of the *Proceedings* provides an artist's per-
spective: Kettaneh gives us an account on her very inspired work involving
written language in many forms.

The second part of the *Proceedings* starts with a block of four papers in the
area of sinographemics: Joyce & Masuda explore three-character and four-
character words in Japanese; Honda provides us with a modular-theoretic
approach to the Japanese writing system; Myers and Morioka deal with the
internal structure of sinographs.
A group of eight contributions of historical nature follows. Stojanov deals with the description of punctuation in Western grammar books; Drozhaschikh, Efimova & Meshcheryakova with form-meaning regularities in Old English; Presutti with graphemics of new Romance phonemes in Italian; Fendel with Coptic alphabets; Giunashvili with Old Aramaic script in Georgia; Fedorova with Aztec emblems; Kelly with the Bougainville Naasioi Oto-maung alphabet; Schoch & Melka with the Easter Island rongorongo script.

The next block of five papers deals with applications of the computer in grapholinguistics: Jee, Tamariz & Shillcock study sound-graphic systematicity in various fonts; Sheng, Colin & Perono Cacciafoco attempt to decipher Linear A by a brute force attack; Salgarella & Castellan present a palæographical database for Linear A; Donnelly describes a system for digitizing Swahili in Arabic script; Xu presents a semantic index for the Dongba script of the Naxi people of Southwest China.

Speech and writing are not the only modalities of languages. There is also gestuality, used in sign languages. Two papers deal with the written transcription of sign languages: Danet et al. present the TYPANNOT system; Bianchini discusses metalinguistic awareness. Among the authors of Danet et al. is also Dominique Boutet who succumbed to the COVID-19 disease a few weeks before the conference.

The three papers that follow deal with the confrontation of two scripts. Koch investigates that between Roman and Cyrillic for the Moldovan language; Awad, Mourad & Elamil study the use of punctuation in French-to-Arabic translation; Rashwan investigates the visual untranslatability of the Ancient Egyptian and Arabic writing systems.

The volume concludes with a supernatural touch, as Küster leads us in a tour of magical writing, from cuneiform acrostics to modern manga.

The volumetry of these *Proceedings* is important: its 42 papers were written by 62 authors, span 1,122 pages (an average of 26.8 pages per paper, with a maximum of 102 and a minimum of 12 pages) and contain 412 figures and 1,940 bibliographical references; the index stretches to 1,247 entries. For technical reasons, the printed version of the *Proceedings* has been split into two parts: Part I, from Neef to Kettaneh (pages 1 to 577) and Part II, from Joyce & Masuda to Küster (pages 579 to 1122). Both front matter (preface, table of contents, list of participants) and back matter (index) are provided in both parts, the former in Roman page numbering (i-xii) and the latter in Greek page numbering (α'-κγ'). Some papers use different illustrations and text styles for the printed black & white version and the online color version.

All presentations at the *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020* conference were recorded and can be viewed on Youtube. The links can be found on the conference webpage (https://grafematik2020.sciencesconf.org/ or https://perma.cc/3TJ6-RCJ5).
## List of Participants
at the

## Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020
Conference

Ahlberg, Aija Katriina

Almuzaini, Rawan

Anderson, Debbie

Ashourinia, Kaveh

Avni, Shani

Awad, Dana

Ayre, Christine

Baggio, Pietro

Beaujard, Laurence

Bergerhausen, Johannes

Bering, Bianca

Bianchini, Claudia S.

Birk, Elisabeth

Březina, David

Caren, Daniel

Castellan, Simon

Chalkley, Kendra

Chew, Patrick

Clifton, John

Contesse, Adrien

Cooley, Christopher

Crellin, Robert

Dalma, Véry

Danet, Claire

Danziger, Eve

Davison, Phil

Donnelly, Kevin

Drozhashchikh, Nataliia

Dunlavey, Nicholas

Dürscheid, Christa

Dürst, Martin

Efimova, Elena

Elti di Rodeano, Sveva

Elvira Astoreca, Natalia

Esfahbod, Behnam

Evertz-Rittich, Martin

Farrando, Pere

Fedorova, Liudmila

Fendel, Victoria Beatrix

Fisher, Filipa

Folaron, Debbie

Gardner, William

Gaultney, Victor

Gautier, Antoine

Giunashvili, Helen

Gnanadesikan, Amalia

Gomez-Jimenez, Eva

Handa, Kenichi

Handel, Zev

Haralambous, Yannis

Harbour, Daniel

Honda, Keisuke

Huot-Marchand, Thomas

Hutto, Megan

Iannucci, David

Ikeda, Elissa

Issele, Joanna

Iyengar, Arvind

Izadpanah, Borna

Jee, Hana

Joyce, Terry

Judson, Anna

Kang, Michelle

Karakılçık, Pınar

Kelly, Piers

Kettaneh, Christine

Kobayashi-Better, Daniel

Koch, Christian
Kučera, Jan
Kulish, Olga
Küster, Marc
Landragin, Frédéric
Mansour, Kamal
Martinod, Emmanuella
Meilleur, Maurice
Meletis, Dimitrios
Melka, Tomi S.
Mescheryakova, Evgenia
Morioka, Tomohiko
Myers, James
Mykolaiv, Ivan
Nicolaou, Andrew
Osborn, J.R.
Osterkamp, Sven
Papazian, Hrant
Penney, Laurence
Perono Cacciafoco, Francesco
Pierson, Morgane
Plesniarski, Allan
Poth, Christina
Presutti, Stefano
Rashdan, Amany
Rashwan, Hany
Rauff, James
Riggs, Tamye
Roux, Élie
Sadan, Meir

Salgarella, Ester
Salomon, Corinna
Schindelin, Cornelia
Schneider, Elena
Schoch, Robert M.
Schönecker, Anna-Lisa
Schreiber, Gordian
Selvelli, Giustina
Serra, Laura
Shingledecker, Anna
Steele, Pippa
Stojanov, Tomislav
Taha, Haitham
Tauber, James
Tenenbaum, Abi
Ugray, Gábor
Verheijen, Lieke
Vlachou, Irene
Vranas, Apostolos
Wachendorff, Irmi
Waldispühl, Michelle
Walther, Urs
Wang, Ruoan
Wiebe, Bruce
Williamson, Ryan
Wöhrmann, Frithjof
Xu, Duoduo
Yang, Ben
Ziegler, Monica
# Constructing Databases of Japanese Three- and Four-Kanji Compound Words

## Some Observations Concerning Their Morphological Structures

Terry Joyce · Hisashi Masuda

*Abstract.* As the principal component of the multiple script Japanese writing system (JWS), morphographic kanji function as the core units of graphematic representation for a considerable proportion of the Japanese lexicon (Joyce and Masuda, 2018; 2019; Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa, 2014; Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016; Nomura, 1975; 1988). Deeply entwined with the morphographic nature of Japanese kanji (Joyce, 2011), the Japanese language offers especially fascinating opportunities for both linguistic and psycholinguistic investigations of compound words (Joyce, 2002; 2004; Masuda and Joyce, 2018). As contributions to the ongoing construction of a larger database project of Japanese lexical properties (Joyce, Hodošček, and Masuda, 2017; Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa, 2014), which aims to facilitate such investigations in terms of experimental designs and stimuli preparation, this paper reports on two new database components for three-kanji (3KCWs) and four-kanji compound words (4KCWs) respectively. More specifically, the paper focuses on the results of analyzing their morphological structures. In contrast to 3KCWs, where the dominant morphological structure is attaching suffixes to existing two-kanji compound words (2KCWs), such as可能性/ka-nō-sei/potentiality; possibility [[can + ability = possible; potential] + nature; -ity ending], for 4KCWs, the dominant structure is compounding with two 2KCWs combined, such as自分自身/ji-bun-ji-shin/ oneself [[oneself + one's lot = oneself] + [oneself + someone = oneself]].

## 1. Introduction

One of the most fundamental characteristics of contemporary written Japanese is its simultaneous employment of multiple scripts, which is

Terry Joyce ID 0000-0001-9625-1979

School of Global Studies, Tama University, 802 Engyo, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, 252-0805, Japan

E-mail: terry@tama.ac.jp

Hisashi Masuda ID 0000-0001-8619-6275

Faculty of Health Sciences, Hiroshima Shudo University, 1-1-1 Ozukahigashi, Asaminami-ku, Hiroshima, 731-3195, Japan

E-mail: hmasuda@shudo-u.ac.jp

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*

Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 5.

Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 579–619. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-joyc

ISBN: 978-2-9570549-7-8, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-9-2
referred to as 漢字仮名交じり文 /kan-ji-ka-na.ma.jiri.bun/<fnref n="1" /> mixed kanji and kana writing [kanji + kana + mixed + writing] in Japanese (for fuller accounts of the Japanese writing system (JWS), see Joyce and Masuda, 2018; 2019, as well as Kess and Miyamoto, 1999; Konno, 2013; Smith, 1996; Smith and Schmidt, 1996; Taylor and Taylor, 2014). The four component scripts are morphographic 漢字 /kan-ji/ kanji [Han + character], the two separate syllabographic 仮名 /ka-na/ kana [provisional + name] scripts of 平仮名 /hira-ga-na/ biragana [smooth + provisional + name] and 片仮名 /kata-ka-na/ katakana, [part + provisional + name] and the phonemic alphabet of ローマ字 /rōma.ji/ Roman letters [Roman + character], which are supplemented by the small set of Arabic numerals 数字 /sū-ji/ numbers [number + character] (Joyce and Masuda, 2018; 2019). Undoubtedly, this unique aspect of the JWS contributes greatly to the highly fungible nature of Japanese written representations (Backhouse, 1984; Joyce, Hodošček, and Nishina, 2012; Joyce and Masuda, 2018; 2019; Miller, 2011; Robertson, 2015; 2017; Smith, 1996; Tranter, 2008). Although Joyce and Masuda (2019) have recently advocated an inclusive notion of intentionality as a promising approach to capturing the diverse motivational factors that influence Japanese graphematic representations, as they equally emphasize, instances of graphematic variation can only be appropriately interpreted with reference to Japanese orthographic conventions. Moreover, as such conventions are closely tied to the historical development of the JWS—from the initial adaptation of Chinese characters, the early emergence of the kana scripts, and the relatively recent supplement with rōmaji (Joyce and Masuda, 2018; Lurie, 2012)—there are particularly strong affinities between the scripts and the different lexical strata of the Japanese language (Joyce and Masuda, 2018; 2019; Kageyama and Saito, 2016).

Citing Tamamura (1984) in illustration, Kageyama and Saito (2016) claim that studies of the Japanese language have traditionally distinguished between four 語種 /go-shu/ word types [word + type], or lexical strata. They are (1) indigenous 和語 /wa-go/ Native-Japanese words (NJ) [Japan + word], (2) 漢語 /kan-go/ Sino-Japanese words (SJ) [Han + word], entering from Chinese, (3) 外来語 /gai-rai-go/ Foreign-Japanese words (FJ) [outside + come + word], entering from foreign languages since the 16th century, and (4) 混成語 /kon-sei-go/ hybrid words [mix + create + word].<fnref n="2" />

<footnote n="1">1. Unless redundant by context, such as within Table listings, Japanese words are represented conventionally and are usually followed by a phonological gloss between slash symbols, / /, English translation in italics, and morpheme meanings and their concatenation within square brackets [ ]. Within the phonological glosses, word boundaries are indicated by spaces, kanji-kanji boundaries by hyphens, and other script boundaries by periods, with macrons, such as ō, indicating long vowels.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. It should, however, be noted that more recent classifications also cover four types, but the categories differ. Although Shibatani (1990) and Kageyama and Saito</footnote>
The close affinities between the component scripts and the different lexical strata are manifest in a set of general tendencies.³ Broadly, these are for kanji to represent both SJ and NJ content words as well as NJ verb and adjective stems, for hiragana to represent NJ functional elements such as grammatical markers and inflections, for katakana to represent both FJ and mimetic words, and for rōmaji to represent FJ words and names (Joyce and Masuda, 2019; Kageyama and Saito, 2016).

<table><caption>TABLE 1. Affinities between Japanese lexical strata and JWS component scripts</caption><thead><tr><th>Stratum</th><th>Script</th><th>Examples</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="4">NJ</td><td>Kanji</td><td>山 /yama/ mountain;<br>筆 /fude/ calligraphy brush</td></tr><tr><td>Kanji-Hiragana</td><td>高い /taka.i/ tall; 書く /ka.ku/ to write</td></tr><tr><td>Hiragana</td><td>これ /kore/ this; の /no/ possessive marker</td></tr><tr><td>Katakana</td><td>ワンワン /wanwan/ doggy;<br>チカチカ /chikachika/ flickering, twinkling</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">SJ</td><td>Kanji</td><td>愛 /ai/ love;<br>大学 /dai-gaku/ university [big + study];<br>正書法 /sei-sho-hō/ orthography<br>[correct + write + way]</td></tr><tr><td>Katakana</td><td>ミルク /miruku/ milk; クラス /kurasu/ class;<br>スマートフォン /sumātofon/ smart phone</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">FJ</td><td>Rōmaji</td><td>PC /pīshī/ personal computer;<br>CM /shīemu/ TV commercial</td></tr><tr><td>Kanji-Kanji</td><td>表玄関 /omote-gen-kan/ front entrance<br>[NJ+SJ]</td></tr><tr><td>Kanji-Katakana</td><td>野菜ジュース /ya-sai.jūsu/ vegetable juice<br>[SJ+FJ]</td></tr><tr><td>Hybrid</td><td>Hiragana-Katakana</td><td>あんパン /an.pan/ bean-jam bun [NJ+FJ]</td></tr></tbody></table>

Notes: NJ = native-Japanese; SJ = Sino-Japanese; FJ = foreign-Japanese

(2016) continue to recognize the same first three categories (i.e., NJ, SJ and FJ), their fourth category is *mimetic words* that “express non-linguistic sounds or cries or vividly express states or action or physical sensations” (Kageyama and Saito, 2016, p. 12). Usually, they are referred to as 擬音語・擬声語・擬態語 /gi-on-go・gi-sei-go・gi-tai-go/ in Japanese.

3. As one source of deviation from these tendencies, Kageyama and Saito (2016) note that, because the different scripts have distinct perceptual characteristics, such as the stiff and formal impressions of kanji, writers may employ graphematic variants to convey certain nuances. However, as Joyce and Masuda (2019) describe in some detail, there is a wider range of intentionality factors underlying Japanese graphematic variation. Accordingly, they treat such script associations as one subcategory of script sensibilities, which is one of their three main factor categories, together with message context and creative representations.
Table 1 presents some examples of these script-lexical strata affinities. Structurally, Table 1 is closely based on Kageyama and Saito's (2016, p. 13) Table 1, entitled 'Classification of word types in traditional Japanese grammar' (as adapted, in turn, from Tamamura, 1984, p. 110), which is primarily from the perspective of the lexical strata. It has, however, been supplemented with a few additional examples from Joyce and Masuda (2019, p. 253) Table 1, entitled 'Examples of standard JWS orthographic conventions', which underscores the same script-strata associations, albeit primarily from the perspective of the JWS's component scripts. While granting that the range of examples in Table 1 may potentially obscure matters, a couple of deeply intertwined points, which are particularly germane to this paper, warrant highlighting. The first point is that, although exact script proportions vary across different genres of written Japanese, kanji are unquestionably the principal component script of the JWS. Indeed, in an interesting study of average script proportions, Igarashi (2007) reports that kanji represented approximately 72%, hiragana 18%, katakana 6% and alphabetic symbols and numbers 4% of the word lists that she extracted from three major newspapers, which, in targeting general adult readerships, closely conform to standard Japanese orthographic conventions.

The second significant point is that, because kanji have deep affinities with the two dominant Japanese lexical strata, both NJ and SJ words, they function as the core units of graphematic representation for a considerable proportion of the Japanese lexicon. Admittedly, this may superficially appear to be merely stating the reason why kanji are the dominant component script within the JWS, but the pluralistic links between kanji and both the NJ and SJ lexical strata are key to understanding the complex nature of Japanese morphographic kanji (Joyce, 2011; Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016). Although Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, p. 93) tender their remark with specific reference to SJ words, it is essentially impossible to discuss the graphematic representation of the Japanese lexicon as a whole "without some explanation of the kanji themselves" (italics in original). It is, therefore, expedient at this point to briefly draw on their succinct account and examples of how kanji became associated with both SJ and NJ words. By their definition, SJ words have entered the Japanese language due to lexical borrowing from the Chinese language; a process that essentially dates back to around the third and fourth centuries to when Chinese characters were initially borrowed and subsequently adapted for written Japanese. Consistent with their morphographic nature in Chinese, kanji represent either a single word or a morpheme, such as 木 meaning tree. Also reflecting different historical Chinese pronunciations, this particular kanji is associated with two SJ morphemes or, from the perspective of their phonological values, the two 音読み /on-yo.mi/ SJ readings [sound + reading] of /moku/ and /boku/, in different SJ compound words, as in (1).
<table><tr><td>(1) /moku/ 木馬 /moku-ba/ wooden horse [wood + horse]</td></tr><tr><td>材木 /zai-moku/ timber [material + tree]</td></tr><tr><td>/boku/ 木刀 /boku-tō/ wooden sword [tree + sword]</td></tr><tr><td>巨木 /kyo-boku/ large tree [giant + tree]</td></tr></table>

Moreover, as the Japanese language already had NJ words for many of the SJ morphemes represented by kanji, such as the NJ /ki/ for *tree*, it does not require a great leap of imagination to understand how kanji also came to be associated with those NJ morphemes and their phonological values; 訓讀み /kun-yo.mi/ *NJ readings* [semantic + reading].<fnref n="4" /> As Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (ibid.) stress, although some SJ words are monomorphemic and, thus, graphematically represented by a single kanji, such as 茶 /cha/ *tea* and 損 /son/ *loss*, most SJ morphemes are bound morphemes in nature, such that they combine with other SJ morphemes to form compound words.

The Japanese language is particularly interesting from the perspectives of word formation processes and its morphological structures (Kageyama and Saito, 2016; Shibatani, 1990; Tamamura, 1984; 1985). However, as Kageyama and Saito (2016) observe, the application of various word formation processes varies markedly across the different lexical strata. Consistently, although compounding, which Shibatani (1990, p. 237) singles out as being the most productive process by far, is attested with both NJ and SJ elements, it is particularly prominent for SJ words (Kageyama and Saito, 2016; Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016). Some sense of the striking differences can be discerned from Joyce, Masuda and Ogawa's (2014) analyses of the graphematic representation codes that they applied to the headwords of the sixth edition of the 広辞苑 /kō-ji-en/ *Kōjien* dictionary (Shinmura, 2008). For example, with C standing for kanji, H for hiragana and K for katakana, 山 was coded as C, 高い as CH, 大学 as 2C, and 山登り /yamano-bobo.ri/ *mountain climbing* [mountain + climb] as 2CH. Table 2 shows the ten most frequent graphematic representations codes for the list of Kōjien headwords.<fnref n="5" />

What is particularly striking about these results is that the first three graphematic representation codes of 2C, 3C and 4C (i.e., 2KCWs,

<footnote n="4">4. The official list of characters for general use, known as the 常用漢字表 /jō-yō-kan-ji-hyō/ *Jōyō kanji list* (Agency for Cultural Affairs, 2010), also includes /ko/ as an NJ morpheme in some NJ compound words, such 木陰 /ko-kage/ *shade of tree* [tree + shade]. Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, p. 93) refer to it as an “allomorph (apophonic variant)” and acknowledge that “the same character 木 is used in such cases as well”.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5. The sixth edition of Kōjien has 232,795 headword entries, but the analyzed list consisted of 215,597 headwords after excluding all kanji that are not on the official jōyō or the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) level 1 lists. Of the 1,152 separate graphematic representations codes applied to the list, 578 (50.2%) were unique (i.e., frequency = 1).</footnote>
<table><caption>TABLE 2. Ten most frequent graphematic representation codes observed for a list of Kōjien (Shinmura, 2008) headwords (based on Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa, 2014, p. 188)</caption><thead><tr><th>Code</th><th>Frequency</th><th>Percentage</th><th>Code</th><th>Frequency</th><th>Percentage</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>2C</td><td>80,949</td><td>37.5</td><td>CHCH</td><td>4,688</td><td>2.2</td></tr><tr><td>3C</td><td>32,614</td><td>15.1</td><td>C</td><td>4,625</td><td>2.1</td></tr><tr><td>4C</td><td>19,245</td><td>8.9</td><td>5C</td><td>4,495</td><td>2.1</td></tr><tr><td>2CH</td><td>8,916</td><td>4.1</td><td>CH</td><td>4,394</td><td>2.0</td></tr><tr><td>CHC</td><td>5,604</td><td>2.6</td><td>4K</td><td>3,469</td><td>1.6</td></tr></tbody></table>

Note: Basic codes are C = kanji, H = hiragana, K = katakana

3KCWs and 4KCWs, respectively) together account for 61.5% of the graphematic representations for the Kōjien headword list. However, although such concatenations of kanji are prototypically characteristic of SJ compounds, it should be stressed immediately that, because their analysis was purely from the perspective of graphematic representation, Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa (2014) did not seek to explicitly control for lexical strata. Thus, while it is reasonable to assume that the majority of those compound words are SJ compounds, it should also be acknowledged that the frequency counts, particular the 2KCW count, also include some proportion of NJ compound words.

Even though many combinations of two NJ morphemes are graphematically represented with two kanji, pronounced according to their NJ readings, such as 大雨 /ō-ame/ heavy rain [big + rain] (Masuda and Joyce, 2018), such combinations more frequently yield graphematic representations that are mixtures of kanji and hiragana.<fnref n="6" /> Thus, in contrast to the three most frequent graphematic representations being predominately SJ compounds, the fourth to sixth most frequent codes of 2CH, CHC, and CHCH are likely to be predominately NJ compound words, as illustrated in (2).

(2) 2CH
南向き /minimi-mu.ki/ facing south [south + face toward]
底堅い /soko-gata.i/ stable (market) after bottoming out
[bottom + firm]<fnref n="7" />

CHC
食べ物 /ta.be.mono/ food [eat + thing]
泣き声 /na.ki.goe/ cry, crying voice [cry + voice]

CHCH
立ち読み /ta.chi.yo.mi/ reading while standing (in store)
[stand + read]

売り買い /u.ri.ka.i/ trade; buying and selling [sell + buy]

<footnote n="6">6. This is because the 連用形 /ren-yō-kei/ infinitive form [connect + use + form] of many NJ verbs and adjectives consists of a stem and inflection, which are graphematically represented by a kanji and a hiragana, respectively.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7. Kageyama and Saito (2016, p. 20) cite this, together with 高止まり /taka-do.mari/ remaining high [high + stop] (2C2H), as evidence of newly coined NJ compounds being common in specialized fields, like the stock market.</footnote>
In concluding their survey of the word-formation processes and productivity of SJ words, Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016) single out two reasons why SJ words are so productive (as evidenced in the considerable gaps between the frequencies and percentages of the three most frequent graphematic representation codes compared to the subsequent three codes in Table 2). The first is what Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (ibid., p. 129) refer to as a visual factor; namely, “that the meanings of the component morphemes are easily comprehended through the *kanji*” (italics in original). The second reason, which they regard as being the more important, is what they refer to as relaxed restrictions on compound lengths when the compound head is a SJ morpheme. In that context, Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (ibid., p. 129) particularly emphasize “the iterative application of compounding rules to produce compounds four or more characters in length and the vigor of affixes that can attach to bases of three or more characters”.<fnref n="8" />

Unquestionably, the morphology of Japanese compound words is an especially interesting topic from the perspectives of both writing systems research and the related areas of psycholinguistic research into visual word recognition and the mental lexicon. In light of growing research interest into the representation and retrieval of morphological information within the mental lexicon, Kobayashi et al.’s (2016, p. 129) claim that “kanji play an important role in providing the readers of written Japanese with a visual aid for capturing the meaning of a word at a glance” undoubtedly warrants further empirical investigation. One potentially fertile approach in that respect could be to conduct visual word recognition experiments that utilize the constituent priming paradigm with Japanese compound words of various lengths (Joyce, 2002; Masuda and Joyce, 2018). Moreover, given that kanji are associated with both NJ and SJ morphemes, analyses of the morphological structures of Japanese compound words can potentially further illuminate the intricate nature of morphography in the case of the JWS; a topic of potentially profound significance for writing systems research.

Against such background considerations, this paper reports on the construction of two new databases of 3KCWs and 4KCWs, which have been compiled as components of a larger database project concerned

<footnote n="8">8. However, in order to more appropriately contextualize this comment, it should also be noted that Kobayashi et al.’s (2016) chapter outline only includes sections up to four-character SJ words. As they explain, although it is theoretically possible to construct SJ words of unlimited lengths, such words are inevitably combinations of compound word elements. In illustration, Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, pp. 114–115) analyze 新社屋建設案発表会 /shin-sha-oku ken-setsu-an hap-pyōkai/ *presentation of plan for construction of new company building* according to its component structure, working from its head of 発表会 [[disclose + diagram = presentation] + gathering] for the announcement of the 建設案 [[build + establish = construction] + plan] for the 新社屋 [new + [company + building]].</footnote>
with Japanese lexical properties (Joyce, Hodošček, and Masuda, 2017; Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa, 2014). The overarching objective of the larger database project is to compile a database of scale, which can support linguistic and psycholinguistic research on the Japanese lexicon, such as facilitating the selection of stimuli for psycholinguistic surveys and priming experiments (Masuda and Joyce, 2018). Consistent with common practice (Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016), the component databases for the larger database project focus on different aspects of the Japanese lexicon, as such compound words according to their overall lengths and targeted lexical properties. For instance, Masuda and Joyce (2005) supplemented a list of 2KCW headwords extracted from the fifth edition of Kōjien (Shinmura, 1995) with various data relating to morphological family sizes, morphological structures and semantic categories, while Masuda, Joyce, et al. (2014) focused on semantic transparency ratings for 2KCWs. The present paper focuses primarily on the analyses of the new database components in terms of the morphological structures of the 3KCWs and 4KCWs, respectively. As the target compound words were extracted according to their graphematic representations, without explicitly controlling for lexical strata, while the majorities of the 3KCWs and 4KCWs will be SJ, inevitably, some proportion of both databases will be either NJ or hybrid compound words. After briefly outlining the extracting and cleaning of the two database lists in Section 2, Sections 3 and 4 present the results of analyzing the morphological structures of the 3KCW and 4KCWs, respectively. The paper ends with a short section of concluding remarks.

## 2. List Extraction and Cleaning

Although the analyzed lists of 3KCWs and 4KCWs were extracted on separate occasions, the two-stage extraction procedures were identical in both cases. During the respective first stages, all the relevant compound words were extracted from the set of corpus word lists (CWLs) that Joyce, Hodošček, and Nishina (2012) compiled from the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ) (Joyce, Hodošček, and Masuda, 2017; Maekawa et al., 2013). Joyce et al.'s (2012) CWLs are grouped according to both the two word-units definitions<fnref n="9" /> and the word class divisions used within the BCCWJ project, and all CWL files,

<footnote n="9">9. The main lexical demarcation employed with the BCCWJ is a somewhat elusive one in distinguishing between short-unit words (SUWs) and long-unit words (LUWs). Although the short-long labels evoke a length-based contrast, as Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa (2014) explain, the distinction is essentially of lexical status, such that SUWs include both bound morphemes and simple words (dictionary headwords) and LUWs are complex words and phrases.</footnote>
apart from the proper noun files, were examined to check for the pos-
sible presence of target compound words. In addition to recording the
CWL source file, all of the CWL's lexical information was retained for
reference in analyzing the compound words. This information includes
columns for the underlying lemma entry, lemma length (used to extract
target compounds), number of graphematic variants, etymology code,
BCCWJ frequency of the lemma, orthographic base (graphematic vari-
ants of a lemma), orthographic base pronunciations, lengths of ortho-
graphic bases, BCCWJ frequency of the orthographic base, and ratio of
total lemma frequency covered by a particular orthographic base form.
Stage 1 processing resulted in spreadsheets of 171,123 rows of 3KCWs
and 298,944 rows of 4KCWs.

The substantial disparity in the numbers of spreadsheet rows for the
3KCWs and 4KCWs extracted from the CWLs is consistent with the
analyses of graphematic representation codes that Joyce, Hodošček, and
Masuda (2017) also conducted for Joyce et al.'s (2012) CWLs. Focusing
only on the relevant long-unit word (LUW) data, even though the first
and second most frequent graphematic representation codes by types
counts were 4C (15.4%) and 3C (9.3%), respectively, by token counts,
the 3C code was only the eighth most frequent (3.1%) and the 4C code
did not feature amongst the top ten codes at all. Those findings indicate
that, although there are far fewer 3KCWs than 4KCWs within the Japan-
ese lexicon overall, 3KCWs generally tend to occur more frequently than
4KCWs.

In order to derive lists of more practical lengths for analyses, the re-
spective second stages commenced by first applying the criterion that
the BCCWJ lemma frequencies (token counts) should be either equal
to or greater than 10. Moreover, reflecting the automatic nature of the
methods used in extracting the CWL source corpus, additional clean-
ing work was required to remove some non-words, some proper nouns
and to merge for cases of lemma replications. Accordingly, Stage 2 pro-
cessing resulted in database lists of 23,046 3KCW-lemmas and 23,159
4KCW-lemmas. Although the application of the frequency criterion
yielded highly comparable lists in terms of the overall numbers of com-
pound word lemmas that each database component contains, naturally,
the impact of eliminating compound words with frequencies of less than
10 was far greater in the case of the 4KCWs. That is, although Stage 2
processing for the 3KCWs yielded a list that was 13.5% of the Stage 1
extracted list, Stage 2 processing for the 4KCWs yielded a list that con-
tained only 7.75% of the Stage 1 extracted list. It should also be noted that
while the distributions of lemma frequencies are generally consistent
for both database lists, with both being typical of corpus frequencies,
the 3KCWs are generally of higher token frequency counts compared to
the 4KCWs, as the plots of log-transformed frequencies in Figure 1 indi-
cate. More specifically, for the 3KCWs, the frequency range is from 10
to 18,395 with a mean of 88.5 and median of 25, while for the 4KCWs, the frequency range is from 10 to 4,127 with a mean of 43.1 and a median of 20.

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. Log-transformed lemma frequencies of the 3KCWs and 4KCWs</figcaption></figure>

Even though the BCCWJ's original lexical strata codes (i.e., NJ, SJ or hybrids) are retained within the respective databases compiled from the CWLs, the primary criterion for inclusion has been the appropriate lemma length of 3KCWs and 4KCWs, respectively. Thus, while acknowledging that both database lists contain some proportions of NJ and hybrid compound words and that awareness concerning the lexical stratum of the components often greatly informs the appropriate classifications of the compound words, the analyses of morphological structures reported in the subsequent sections do not explicitly consider the lexical stratum of the component elements. The conducted analyses of both database lists adopted similar conventions for denoting the constituent component kanji, which were designated as A, B, and C (3KCWs), as well as D (4KCWs), respectively, with square-brackets used to indicate internal structures, such as [AB]+C to indicate a 2KWC with a C addition and [AB]+[CD] to indicate a combination of two 2KCWs. Moreover, as Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, p. 108) emphasize, with SJ morphemes, in particular, it can often be quite difficult to discern both a morpheme's status, as either a free word or bound element, and the word-formation process that underlies a particular compound word, as either involving compounding or affix-derivation. Accordingly, in considering the appropriate classification of all compound words, we have also checked for alternative structures. To that end, all compound words were initially segmented and the component kanji
were subsequently recombined to consider for all possible structures. For example, as 農業/nō-gyō/agriculture [agriculture + business] and 業者 /gyō-sha/trader, business person [business + person] both exist as 2KCWs, it is necessary to consider all component meanings and usage patterns to determine that [AB]+C is the more coherent interpretation of 農業者 /nō-gyō-sha/agricultural worker [agriculture + business + person].<fnref n="10" />

### 3. The Morphological Structures of the 3KCW Database

Although Joyce and Masuda (2019) tendered an initial report about compiling this database list of 23,046 3KCWs, this paper describes the results of analyzing their morphological structures in a little more detail. In addition to presenting a summary table of the morphological structures, Section 3.1 includes a table of the top 20 most frequent 3KCWs, as well as some general analyses of the A and C additions to 2KCWs. Three further sub-sections focus on the morphological structures, with Section 3.2 on the primary structure of [AB]+C, Section 3.3 on the secondary structure of A+[BC], and Section 3.4 on the remaining 3KCW structures.

#### 3.1. Morphological Structures of the 3KCW Database: Summary and A + C Additions

Table 3 presents the breakdown of the 3KCW database list according to their morphological structures, with both type counts and their corresponding percentages. As the morphological structures of 3KCWs are generally transparent, it has been possible to confidently classify the database list according to eight morphological structures.<fnref n="11" /> As Table 3 clearly indicates, the primary morphological structure of [AB]+C is highly dominant in accounting for 77.1% of the database list. In contrast, the secondary structure of A+[BC] only accounts for 21.3% overall, which is about one-third of the primary structure's percentage. However, taking the primary and secondary structures together, they account for the vast majority of 3KCWs, at 98.4% for the database list, with six other structures underlying the remaining 1.6%. Firmly under scoring the profound significance of 2KCWs within the Japanese lexicon

<footnote n="10">10. Although we regard the [AB]+C classification as being the more plausible interpretation, we are also planning to conduct psycholinguistic surveys to investigate the extent to which alternative structures might be activated in the processing of such compound words.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11. Table 3 also includes an adjustment category of multiple types for a few 3KCWs that are open to alternative analyses.</footnote>
(Joyce, 2011; Joyce, Hodošček, and Masuda, 2017; Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016; Nomura, 1975; 1988), the majority of 3KCWs are 2KCWs combined with an additional morpheme; either predominately attached to the end or, in considerable cases, inserted at the beginning.

<table><caption>TABLE 3. Breakdown of the morphological structures in the 3KCW database</caption><thead><tr><th>Morphological structure</th><th>Type counts</th><th>Percentage</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>[AB]+C</td><td>17,761</td><td>77.1</td></tr><tr><td>A+[BC]</td><td>4,904</td><td>21.3</td></tr><tr><td>[A(C*)]+[BC] (with (C*) omitted)</td><td>154</td><td>0.7</td></tr><tr><td>Non-divisible</td><td>93</td><td>0.4</td></tr><tr><td>Phonological transcription (当て字)</td><td>64</td><td>0.3</td></tr><tr><td>Monomorphemic (熟字訓)</td><td>45</td><td>0.2</td></tr><tr><td>A+B+C</td><td>25</td><td>0.1</td></tr><tr><td>[AB]+[(A*)C] (with (A*) omitted)</td><td>15</td><td>0.1</td></tr><tr><td>Multiple types (count adjustment)</td><td>-15</td><td>-0.1</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Total</strong></td><td><strong>23,046</strong></td><td><strong>100</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

Table 4 presents the 20 most frequent 3KCWs based on token frequency counts, which indicates that frequency is independent of morphological structure. Although the primary morphological structure of [AB]+C is the most frequent among these most frequent 3KCWs, which is consistent with the overall analysis results, other morphological structures are also associated with highly frequent 3KCWs, such as 雾冂気/fun-i-ki/ mood; ambience [atmosphere + surround + spirit], which is classified as non-divisible. Although each of the SJ morphemes contributes semantically to some degree to the overall meaning of this 3KCW, its original etymology is no longer obvious.

Understandably, a sizeable proportion, at 12.0% of the 3KCWs are combinations of number kanji with various numerical units and classifiers and, as may be also discerned from Table 4, some of these are of high frequencies, such as 三十分 / san-jip-pun/ thirty minutes [[three + ten = thirty] + minutes] and 十二月 /jū-ni-gatsu/ December; 12 months [[ten + two = twelve] + month].

Before turning to the dominant primary and secondary morphological structures, as the vast majority of 3KCWs involve either a single SJ or NJ morpheme being added to an existing 2KCW, it is beneficial to also note Masuda and Joyce's (2019) separate analyses of the A and C additions. Notwithstanding the challenges, with most kanji being associated with both multiple SJ and multiple NJ morphemes and that the status of
<table><caption>TABLE 4. 20 most frequent 3KCWs by token frequency counts for the orthographic base</caption><thead><tr><th>3KCW</th><th>Structure</th><th>Gloss</th><th>Translation and explanation</th><th>Frequency</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>大丈夫</td><td>A+[BC]</td><td>dai-jō-bu</td><td>problem-free [big + [stature + man = healthy]]</td><td>16,861</td></tr><tr><td>可能性</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>ka-nō-sei</td><td>possibility [[can + able = possible] + -ity ending]</td><td>13,555</td></tr><tr><td>不思議</td><td>A+[BC]</td><td>fu-shi-gi</td><td>mysterious [negative + [think + debate = conjecture; guess]]</td><td>13,044</td></tr><tr><td>雰囲気</td><td>Non-divisible</td><td>fun-i-ki</td><td>mood; ambience [atmosphere + surround + spirit]</td><td>11,427</td></tr><tr><td>三十分</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>san-jip-pun</td><td>thirty minutes [[three + ten = thirty] + minutes]</td><td>11,042</td></tr><tr><td>十二月</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>jū-ni-gatsu</td><td>December; 12 months [[ten + two = twelve] + month]</td><td>10,325</td></tr><tr><td>十一月</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>jū-ichi-gatsu</td><td>November; 11 months [[ten + one = eleven] + month]</td><td>9,739</td></tr><tr><td>具体的</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>gu-tai-teki</td><td>concrete, specific</td><td>9,334</td></tr><tr><td>基本的</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>ki-hon-teki</td><td>[[means + substance = tangible] + -ic adjectival noun (AN) ending]</td><td>8,251</td></tr><tr><td>第一項</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>dai-ik-kō</td><td>fundamental, basic</td><td>7,261</td></tr><tr><td>積極的</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>sek-kyoku-teki</td><td>[[foundation + base = basics] + -ic AN ending]</td><td>7,060</td></tr><tr><td>大統領</td><td>A+[BC]</td><td>dai-tō-ryō</td><td>first item [[ordinal number + one = first] + item; clause]</td><td>7,060</td></tr><tr><td>出来事</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>de-ki-goto</td><td>positive; active</td><td>6,992</td></tr><tr><td>一般的</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>ip-pan-teki</td><td>[amass + poles = active, positive] + -ic AN ending]</td><td>6,189</td></tr><tr><td>不可欠</td><td>Non-divisible</td><td>fu-ka-ketsu</td><td>president [big + [govern + territory = ruler; leader; consul]]</td><td>6,992</td></tr><tr><td>十五日</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>jū-go-nichi</td><td>incident; event</td><td>6,189</td></tr><tr><td>高齢者</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>kō-rei-sha</td><td>[[go out + come = occurrence; happening] + thing]</td><td>5,932</td></tr><tr><td>青少年</td><td>[A(C*)]+[BC]</td><td>sei-shō-nen</td><td>general, typical [[one + general = general; ordinary] + -ic AN ending]</td><td>5,932</td></tr><tr><td>二十日</td><td>[AB]+C</td><td>hatsu-ka</td><td>indispensable: essential [negative + can + lack; fail]</td><td>4,209</td></tr><tr><td>小学校</td><td>A+[BC]</td><td>shō-gak-kō</td><td>15th; 15 days [[ten + five] + day]</td><td>3,967</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>elderly person/people [[high + age = old] + person]</td><td>3,902</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>youths, young people</td><td>3,751</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>[[green + years* = youths] + [few + years = youth]]</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>20th; 20 days [[two + ten] + day]</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>elementary school [small + [study + school = school]]</td><td>3,608</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>3,540</td></tr></tbody></table>
any given kanji can vary across different 3KCWs,<fnref n="12" /> Masuda and Joyce analyzed the additional A and C components according to their morpheme status, as either free, bound or affix morphemes. The analysis results are presented in Table 5.

<table><caption>TABLE 5. Results of analysing A and C additional components in terms of their morpheme status</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Morpheme status</th><th colspan="2">A additions</th><th colspan="2">C additions</th></tr><tr><th>Type count</th><th>Percentage</th><th>Type count</th><th>Percentage</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Free</td><td>360</td><td>55.0</td><td>369</td><td>44.0</td></tr><tr><td>Bound</td><td>225</td><td>34.4</td><td>401</td><td>47.9</td></tr><tr><td>Affix</td><td>70</td><td>10.7</td><td>68</td><td>8.1</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Total</strong></td><td><strong>655</strong></td><td><strong>100.0</strong></td><td><strong>838</strong></td><td><strong>100.0</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

## 3.2. Primary Morphological Structure of [AB]+C 3KCWs

As Table 3 vividly attests, 3KCWs overwhelmingly conform to the morphological structure of [AB]+C, where a single morpheme is appended to an existing 2KCW. Accordingly, Table 6 first presents the ten most frequent C-additions in terms of their type counts, which indicates their productivity in combining with multiple 2KCWs, then Table 7 presents the most frequent 3KCWs by token counts, for each of the 10 most frequent C-additions.

Being wholly consistent with Kobayashi et al.'s (2016, p. 127) comment that 的 /teki/ AN ending<fnref n="13" /> is "a representative, highly productive Sino-Japanese affix that combines with a variety of bases," it is not in the least surprising to find that it is the most productive of the C-additions observed within the 3KCW database list. Indicative of its wide applicability, 的 is a C-component of 3KCWs across the database's entire frequency range. In addition to being a C-addition to four of the 20 most

<footnote n="12">12. Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, pp. 95–96) classify one-character SJ morphemes as free (会 /kai/ meeting) or bound—either connectives (運転中 /un-ten-chū while driving), or the bases of verbs (信じる /shin.jiru/ believe), of ANs (急な /kyū.na/ abrupt), of adverbs (実に /jitsu.ni/ actually), of adnominal/adverbial modifiers (単なる /tan.naru/ mere). Kobayashi et al. also regard some bound morphemes as affixes due to their positional constraints, such as 最 /sai/ most as a prefix of最先端 /sai-sen-tan/ cutting edge [most + front + edge] (p. 108).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13. As Kageyama and Saito (2016, p. 18) note, the lexical category of adjectival noun does not exist in English or other European languages. While morphologically a noun, it can function syntactically as an adjective with -だ /-da/ in predicates and -な /-na/ adnominally.</footnote>
<table><caption>TABLE 6. Top ten most frequent C-additions to [AB]+C 3KCWs by type counts</caption><thead><tr><th>C-addition</th><th>Meaning</th><th>Type count</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>的</td><td><em>-ic</em> AN ending</td><td>873</td></tr><tr><td>者</td><td><em>-er</em> person-indicating ending</td><td>685</td></tr><tr><td>等</td><td>etc.; and so forth</td><td>577</td></tr><tr><td>性</td><td><em>-ity</em> ending; nature</td><td>498</td></tr><tr><td>中</td><td>in/during [place or time]</td><td>352</td></tr><tr><td>化</td><td><em>-ization</em> verbal noun (VN) ending</td><td>294</td></tr><tr><td>後</td><td>after</td><td>253</td></tr><tr><td>達</td><td>pluralizing ending</td><td>244</td></tr><tr><td>上</td><td>above; in terms of</td><td>239</td></tr><tr><td>人</td><td><em>-er</em> person-indicating ending</td><td>227</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>TABLE 7. Most frequent [AB]+C 3KCWs by token counts, for each of the most frequent C-additions</caption><thead><tr><th>3KCW</th><th>Gloss</th><th>Translation and explanation</th><th>Frequency</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>具体的</td><td>gu-tai-teki</td><td>concrete<br/>[[means + substance] + AN ending]</td><td>9,334</td></tr><tr><td>高齢者</td><td>kō-rei-sha</td><td>elderly person/people<br/>[[high + age] + person]</td><td>3,902</td></tr><tr><td>整備等</td><td>sei-bi-tō</td><td>maintenance etc.<br/>[[organize + equip] + etc]</td><td>608</td></tr><tr><td>可能性</td><td>ka-nō-sei</td><td>possibility [[can + able] + <em>-ity</em> ending]</td><td>13,555</td></tr><tr><td>世界中</td><td>se-kai-jū</td><td>around the world<br/>[[world + world] + throughout]</td><td>2,034</td></tr><tr><td>生活化</td><td>sei-katsu-ka</td><td>living [[life + active] + VN ending]</td><td>1,195</td></tr><tr><td>十年後</td><td>jū-nen-go</td><td>after 10 years; 10 years later<br/>[[ten + year] + after]</td><td>476</td></tr><tr><td>子供達</td><td>ko-domo-tachi</td><td>children<br/>[[child + accompany] + pluralizer]</td><td>886</td></tr><tr><td>事実上</td><td>ji-jitsu-jō</td><td>as a matter of fact<br/>[[thing + real] + in terms of]</td><td>1,396</td></tr><tr><td>外国人</td><td>gai-koku-jin</td><td>foreigner<br/>[[outside + country] + <em>-er</em> person]</td><td>2,361</td></tr></tbody></table>

frequent 3KCWs (Table 4), some other 3KCW examples that vary in terms of their token frequencies are listed in (3).

<table><tr><td>(3) 比較的</td><td>/hi-kaku-teki/ <i>comparatively</i><br/>[[compare + contrast] + <em>-ic</em> AN]</td><td>3,515</td></tr><tr><td>国際的</td><td>/koku-sai-teki/ <i>international</i><br/>[[country + occasion; side] + <em>-ic</em> AN]</td><td>2,106</td></tr></table>
<table><tr><td>本質的</td><td>/hon-shitsu-teki/ intrinsic; substantial [[true + quality] + -ic AN]</td><td>1,026</td></tr><tr><td>潜在的</td><td>/sen-zai-teki/ implicit, latent [[conceal + exist] + -ic AN]</td><td>506</td></tr><tr><td>挑戦的</td><td>/chō-sen-teki/ challenging; provocative [[contend + battle] + -ic AN]</td><td>99</td></tr></table>

As Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016) point out, the combinations with various bases, as their examples in (4) illustrate, and, consistently, it is one of the most frequent D-additions to 4KCWs.

<table><tr><td>(4) 私的</td><td>/shi-teki/ or /watashi-teki/ private; personal [I + -ic AN]</td></tr><tr><td>活動的</td><td>/katsu-dō-teki/ active; dynamic [[active + move] + -ic AN]</td></tr><tr><td>政治家的</td><td>/sei-ji-ka-teki/ politician-like [[politics + rule] + person] + -ic AN]</td></tr><tr><td>共産主義的</td><td>/kyō-san-shu-gi-teki/ communistic [[together + produce] + [principle + meaning]] + -ic AN]</td></tr><tr><td>草分け的</td><td>/kusa-wa.ke.teki/ pioneering [[grass + divide] + -ic AN]</td></tr><tr><td>カリスマ的</td><td>/karisuma.teki/ charismatic [charisma + -ic AN]</td></tr></table>

As Table 6 shows, the tenth most productive C-addition is an person, reflecting its generic sense, but as Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (ibid., p. 127) point out, it is associated with two SJ morphemes. The first is /jin/, which attaches to both nouns and stems of ANs, such as the examples in (5).

<table><tr><td>(5) 外国人</td><td>gai-koku-jin foreigner [[outside + country] + -er person]</td></tr><tr><td>芸能人</td><td>gei-nō-jin performer [[perform + talent] + -er person]</td></tr><tr><td>有名人</td><td>yū-mei-jin famous person [[possess + name] + -er person]</td></tr></table>

The second SJ morpheme is /nin/, which only attaches to verbal nouns (VN),<fnref n="14" /> such as the examples in (6). A further restriction is that while /nin/ attaches to NJ bases, such as 受け取り人 /u.ke.to.ri.nin/ receiveipent [[receive + take] + person], /jin/ does not, apart from the single exception of 暇人 /hima-jin/ person of leisure [leisure + person].

<table><tr><td>(6) 通行人</td><td>/tsū-kō-nin/ passerby [[pass through + go] + person]</td></tr><tr><td>弁護人</td><td>/ben-go-nin/ advocate; defender [[speech + safeguard] + person]</td></tr><tr><td>管理人</td><td>/kan-ri-nin/ manager; administrator [[control + arrange] + person]</td></tr></table>

<footnote n="14">14. As Kageyama and Saito (2016, p. 18) also stress, the verbal noun (VN) is another lexical categories that does not exist in European languages. Kagayama and Saito describe VNs as “hybrid category” of a noun that can function as a verb when combined with the dummy verb する /suru/.</footnote>
### 3.3. Secondary Morphological Structure of A+[BC] 3KCWs

Although not as common as the primary structure of [AB]+C 3KCWs, the secondary structure of A+[BC] accounts for approximately one-fifth (21.3%) of the 3KCW database list. Table 8 presents the ten most frequent A-additions in terms of their type counts, while Table 9 presents, for each of the ten most frequent A-additions, the most frequent A+[BC] 3KCWs with the respective A-additions.

<table><caption>TABLE 8. Top ten most frequent A-additions to A+[BC] 3KCWs by type counts</caption><thead><tr><td>A-addition</td><td>Meaning</td><td>Type count</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>御</td><td>honorific prefix</td><td>430</td></tr><tr><td>大</td><td>large; big</td><td>313</td></tr><tr><td>各</td><td>each; every</td><td>152</td></tr><tr><td>不</td><td>negative prefix <i>non-</i></td><td>143</td></tr><tr><td>新</td><td>new</td><td>127</td></tr><tr><td>一</td><td>one</td><td>126</td></tr><tr><td>無</td><td>negative prefix <i>un-</i>, <i>non-</i></td><td>95</td></tr><tr><td>同</td><td>same</td><td>93</td></tr><tr><td>諸</td><td>various; several</td><td>90</td></tr><tr><td>全</td><td>all; whole</td><td>86</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>TABLE 9. Most frequent A+[BC] 3KCWs by token counts, for each of the most frequent A-additions</caption><thead><tr><td>3KCW</td><td>Gloss</td><td>Translation and explanation</td><td>Frequency</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>御指摘</td><td>go-shi-teki</td><td>as you indicate<br/>[honorific + [point + pinch]]</td><td>2,171</td></tr><tr><td>大丈夫</td><td>dai-jō-bu</td><td>problem-free<br/>[big + [stature + man = healthy]]</td><td>16,861</td></tr><tr><td>各地域</td><td>kaku-chi-iki</td><td>each region [each + [ground + region]]</td><td>388</td></tr><tr><td>不思議</td><td>fu-shi-gi</td><td>mysterious<br/>[negative + [think + debate]]</td><td>13,044</td></tr><tr><td>新幹線</td><td>shin-kan-sen</td><td>bullet train [new + [trunk + line]]</td><td>1,118</td></tr><tr><td>一時間</td><td>ichi-ji-kan</td><td>one hour [one + [time + interval]]</td><td>6,515</td></tr><tr><td>無意識</td><td>mu-i-shiki</td><td>unconsciousness<br/>[un- + [mind + know]]</td><td>1,263</td></tr><tr><td>同級生</td><td>dō-kyū-sei</td><td>classmate<br/>[same + [rank; class + student]]</td><td>840</td></tr><tr><td>諸外国</td><td>sho-gai-koku</td><td>various foreign countries<br/>[various + [out + country]]</td><td>744</td></tr><tr><td>全世界</td><td>zen-se-kai</td><td>whole world [all + [[world + world]]</td><td>619</td></tr></tbody></table>
While Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, p. 123) acknowl-
edge that there are considerable cases of SJ words "where the distinction
between affix and compound constituent is not clear," they also stress
that A-additions often represent substantive semantic concepts. Indeed,
they provide a number of examples, which they organize according to
five semantic functions, including (a) limiting or modifying the base
meaning, (b) verbal meaning that corresponds to the base noun's argu-
ment, (c) limiting the base noun's reference, (d) adverbially modifying
a predicate-like base, and (e) indicating negation. Examples for each of
these five semantic functions are given in (7).

(7) 好成績 /kō-sei-seki/ *good results* [pleasing + [become + achievements]]
反体制 /han-tai-sei/ *anti-establishment* [opposite + [body + system]]
本製品 /hon-sei-hin/ *this product* [this; main + [manufacture + goods]]
急成長 /kyū-sei-chō/ *rapid growth* [rapid + [become + long]]
未経験 /mi-kei-ken/ *inexperienced* [not yet + [pass thru + effect]]

Instructively, Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (ibid., pp. 126–127) differentiate between the four A-additions that signify negative senses in terms of their nuances and the categories of bases to which they attach. Consistent with its fourth place ranking amongst the most productive A-additions, Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (ibid.) comment that 不 /fu/ and /bu/ *negative* is the most productive and attaches to nouns, adjectival nouns and verbal nouns, as in (8), respectively.

(8) 不景気 /fu-kei-ki/ *recession* [negation + [view + spirit; atmosphere]]
不確実 /fu-kaku-jitsu/ *uncertain* [negation + [confirm + reality]]
不承知 /fu-shō-chi/ *disapproval* [negation + [acquiesce + know]]

The next most productive A-addition with negative connotations is
無 /mu/ *lacking, non-existent*, which attaches to nouns and verbal nouns,
but not adjectival nouns, as in (9).

(9) 無関心 /mu-kan-shin/ *unconcerned* [lacking + [connection + heart]]
無関係 /mu-kan-kei/ *unrelated* [lacking + [connection + connection]]

As an A-addition of 45 3KCWs within the database list, the third most
productive of the A-additions with negative connotations is 未 /mi/ *not*
yet, which attaches to nouns and verbal nouns, but not adjectival nouns,
as in (10).

(10) 未成年 /mi-sei-nen/ *not of age* [not yet [become + age]]
未解決 /mi-kai-ketsu/ *unresolved*
[not yet + [unravel; solve + decide; fix]]
While only attested as an A-addition to 38 A+[BC] 3KCWs within the database list, 非 /hi/ *negation* also attaches to nouns, adjectival nouns and verbal nouns, as in (11) respectively.

(11) 非人情 /hi-nin-jō/ inbuman [negation + [person + feelings]]
非合法 /hi-gō-hō/ unlawful [negation + [fit; suit + law, rule]]
非公認 /hi-kō-nin/ unauthorized
[negation + [public; official + acknowledge]]

### 3.4. Other 3KCW Morphological Structures

Although our analysis of the morphological structures of the 3KCW database reveals that the two structures of [AB]+C and A+[BC] account for the vast majority (98.4%) of 3KCWs, as Table 3 also indicates, six other morphological structures underlie a small percentage of 3KCWs. Accordingly, this section turns to present examples of 3KCWs that conform to those other morphological structures.

Albeit on a distinctly smaller scale (0.7%), the third most frequent morphological structure is [A(C*)]+[BC], where the C-component of an [AC] 2KCW is omitted and the resultant A is attached to a related [BC] 2KCW. The practice of omitting the C-component of an [AC] 2KCWs is undoubtedly a form of clipping that is common with SJ words (Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016, p. 128).<fnref n="15" /> As such, superficially, this structure may appear to resemble the A+[BC] structure, in the sense, that it effectively involves an A-component being inserted before a [BC] 2KCW. It is, however, appropriate to differentiate them, because the [A(C*)]+[BC] structure crucially hinges on the semantic relationship between the [AC] and [BC] 2KCWs, due to their shared C-component, as the examples in (12) illustrate.

(12) [A(C*)]+[BC] (with (C*) omitted)
視聴覚 /shi-chō-kaku/ audiovisual [視覚 vision + 聴覚 hearing]
入出国 /nyū-shutsu-koku/ immigration
[入国 enter country + 出国 depart county]

<footnote n="15">15. Clipping with SJ words most typically involves 4KCWs being shortened to 2KCWs, such as 模擬試験 /mo-gi-shi-ken/ practice test → 模試 /mo-shi/ (A + C) or 高等学校 /kō-tō-gak-kō/ high school → 高校 /kō-kō/ (A + D). One important consequence of such clipping processes is that the resultant 2KCWs tend to have far higher frequencies than the corresponding 4KCW, such as 就活 /shū-katsu/ job bunting [take position + activity] which is derived by clipping from 就職活動 /shū-shoku-katsu-dō/ job bunting [position + post + lively + move].</footnote>
The fourth category of non-divisible is necessary to handle the small set of exceptions (0.4%). Some 3KCWs are classified as non-divisible, because the compound word's etymology and morphological structure are not clear, even though the meanings of the component morphemes are usually related to the overall meaning. Other 3KCWs classified as non-divisible are the results of clipping processes applied to longer compound words. One example of each is presented in (13).

### (13) Non-divisible

<table><tr><td>方程式</td><td>/hō-tei-shiki/ equation; formula<br/>[direction + formula + expression]</td></tr><tr><td>食洗機</td><td>/shoku-sen-ki/ dishwasher ← 食器洗浄機<br/>[[eat + ware = dishes] + [[wash + clean = washing] + machine]]</td></tr></table>

The fifth category is phonological transcriptions (0.3%), known as 当て字 /a.te.ji/ phonological transcription [apply + character] in Japanese, which refers to the convention of phonologically representing a word's syllables with kanji. Although phonological transcriptions are essentially a form of the rebus principle, the individual kanji used for such graphematic representations often have some degree of semantic relevance to the word's meaning, such as in the first example in (14), but sometimes less so, as in the second example.

### (14) Phonological transcriptions (当て字)

<table><tr><td>歌舞伎</td><td>/kabuki/ kabuki; Japanese classical drama [sing + dance + art]</td></tr><tr><td>目論見</td><td>/mokuromi/ plan; scheme; plot [eye + argument + see]</td></tr></table>

The sixth category is monomorphemic words (0.2%), known as 熟字訓 /juku-ji-kun/ monomorphemic word [compound + character + semantic translation] in Japanese, which refers to the convention of representing the meaning of an NJ word with kanji that are semantically related. In contrast to phonological transcriptions where the kanji are representing the syllables of the word, there is usually no phonological correspondence between the elements of the graphematic representation, but the meanings of the component kanji are related to the word's meaning. The first example in (15) may be regarded as the prototypical example that is frequently cited in illustration.

### (15) Monomorphemic words (熟字訓)

<table><tr><td>五月雨</td><td>/samidare/ early summer rain [five + month + rain]</td></tr><tr><td>波止場</td><td>/hatoba/ wharf; quay [wave + stop + place]</td></tr></table>
The seventh morphological structure is A+B+C (0.1%), as the con-
catenation of three morphemes that together constitute some form of
set or may be regarded as exemplars of the compound word's meaning,
as both the examples in (16) indicate.

(16) A+B+C

衣食住 /i-shoku-jū/ *necessities of life* [clothing + food + shelter]

産官学 /san-kan-gaku/ *industry, government and academia*
*[industry + government + academia]*

The eighth and final morphological structure is [AB]+[(A*)C] (0.1%), where the A-component of an [AC] 2KCW is omitted and the resultant C is attached to an [AB] 2KCW. Like the [A(C*)]+[BC] structure, the omitting of the A-component of an [AC] 2KCW is also a form of clipping. Also similar to the [A(C*)]+[BC] structure, it is appropriate to differentiate this from the primary morphological structure of [AB]+C 2KCWs, because the [AB]+[(A*)C] structure also hinges on the semantic relationships between the [AB] and [AC] 2KCWs, due to their shared A-component, as the examples in (17) illustrate.

(17) [AB]+[(A*)C] (with (A*) omitted)

国内外 /koku-nai-gai/ *domestic + foreign* [国内 domestic + 国外 foreign]

十五六 /jū-go-roku/ 15 or 16 [十五 15 + 十六 16]

4. Morphological Structure Results for the 4KCW Database

Having presented the results of analyzing the morphological structures
of the 3KCW database component in some detail, this paper now turns to
present the results for the 4KCW database. Adopting a similar organiza-
tion to the previous section, Section 4.1 starts with a summary table of the
morphological structures and a table of the top 20 most frequent 4KCWs.
Four further sub-sections focus on the various morphological structures,
with Section 4.2 on the primary structure of [AB]+[CD], Section 4.3 on
the second structure of [ABC]+D, Section 4.4 on the tertiary structure of
A+[BCD], and Section 4.5 on the remaining 4KCW structures.

4.1. Morphological Structures of the 4KCW Database: Summary

Table 10 presents the breakdown of the database list of 23,159 4KCWs
according to their morphological structures, with both type counts and
their corresponding percentages.

As the morphological structures of 4KCWs are also generally highly
transparent, it has been possible to confidently classify the database
<table><caption>TABLE 10. Breakdown of the morphological structures in the 4KCW database</caption><thead><tr><th>Morphological structure</th><th>Type counts</th><th>Percentage</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>19,805</td><td>85.3</td></tr><tr><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>2,809</td><td>12.1</td></tr><tr><td>A+[BCD]</td><td>449</td><td>1.9</td></tr><tr><td>Non-divisible</td><td>23</td><td>0.1</td></tr><tr><td>[A(CD*)]+[BCD] (with (*CD) omitted)</td><td>18</td><td>0.1</td></tr><tr><td>[A(D*)]+[B(D*)]+[CD] (with both (*D) omitted)</td><td>16</td><td>0.1</td></tr><tr><td>A+B+C+D</td><td>16</td><td>0.1</td></tr><tr><td>Phonological transcriptions (当て字)</td><td>14</td><td>0.1</td></tr><tr><td>[AB]+C+D</td><td>6</td><td>0.0</td></tr><tr><td>Monomorphemic (熟字訓)</td><td>2</td><td>0.0</td></tr><tr><td>[A(D*)]+[BCD] (with (*D) omitted)</td><td>1</td><td>0.0</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Total</strong></td><td><strong>23,159</strong></td><td><strong>100</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

list according to 11 morphological structures.<fnref n="16" /> Similar to the results for the 3KCWs, the analyses of the morphological structures within the 4KCWs reveals that one structure dominates in accounting for 85.3% of the 4KCW types. However, in the case of 4KCWs, the primary morphological structure is [AB]+[CD], which is consistent with Kobayashi et al.'s (2016, p. 113) comment that “four-character S-J words are words composed of four S-J morphemes, which are typically divided into two words, each consisting of two morphemes”. This primary structure also attests to the immense significance of 2KCWs within the Japanese lexicon (Joyce, 2011; Joyce, Hodošček, and Masuda, 2017; Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016; Nomura, 1975; 1988).

Reflecting the even greater dominance of the [AB]+[CD] structure, in contrast, the secondary structure of [ABC]+D and the tertiary structure of A+[BCD] account for 12.1% and 1.9%, respectively, of all 4KCW structures. Naturally, there are parallels between these morphological structures and the primary and secondary structures of 3KCWs, as they also involve combining an additional morpheme with an existing compound word and the marked preference is for attaching that additional morpheme to the end rather than inserting at the beginning. However, reflecting the even greater dominance of the primary structure, the secondary and tertiary structures are relatively less common for 4KCWs.

<footnote n="16">16. Claiming that the structures of 4KCWs “can be categorized by the patterns of binary branching structures,” Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, pp. 114–115) list nine patterns under four types, following Nomura (1975). Reflecting its importance, the first type is [AB]+[CB], the second is of 3KCWs plus additions (i.e., [ABC]+D and A+[BCD]), the third involves combinations (i.e., [ACD*]+[BCD] and [AD*]+[BD*]+[CD]), and the fourth is A+B+C+D. However, their list does not include either phonological transcriptions or monomorphemic words.</footnote>
<table><caption>TABLE 11. 20 most frequent 4KCWs by token frequency counts</caption><thead><tr><th>4KCW</th><th>Structure</th><th>Gloss</th><th>Translation and explanation</th><th>Frequency</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>自分自身</td><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>ji-bun-ji-shin</td><td>oneself<br/>[oneself + one's lot = oneself] + [oneself + someone = oneself]</td><td>3,288</td></tr><tr><td>三十一日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>san-jū-ichi-nichi</td><td>31st; 31 days [[three + ten + one] + day]</td><td>3,238</td></tr><tr><td>二十五日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-go-nichi</td><td>25th; 25 days [[two + ten + five] + day]</td><td>3,058</td></tr><tr><td>二十一日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-ichi-nichi</td><td>21st; 21 days [[two + ten + one] + day]</td><td>2,718</td></tr><tr><td>二十四日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-yok-ka</td><td>24st; 24 days [[two + ten + four] + day]</td><td>2,716</td></tr><tr><td>二十三日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-san-nichi</td><td>23st; 23 days [[two + ten + three] + day]</td><td>2,660</td></tr><tr><td>二十二日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-ni-nichi</td><td>22rd; 22 days [[two + ten + two] + day]</td><td>2,659</td></tr><tr><td>二十八日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-hachi-nichi</td><td>28th; 28 days [[two + ten + eight] + day]</td><td>2,642</td></tr><tr><td>都道府県</td><td>A+B+C+D</td><td>to-dō-fu-ken</td><td>administrative divisions<br/>[Tokyo + Hokkaido + Osaka/Kyoto + prefectures]</td><td>2,621</td></tr><tr><td>二十六日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-roku-nichi</td><td>26th; 26 days [[two + ten + six] + day]</td><td>2,587</td></tr><tr><td>二十七日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-shichi-nichi</td><td>27th; 27 days [[two + ten + seven] + day]</td><td>2,495</td></tr><tr><td>二十九日</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-jū-ku-nichi</td><td>29th; 29 days [[two + ten + nine] + day]</td><td>2,492</td></tr><tr><td>政府委員</td><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>sei-fu-i-in</td><td>ministerial aide<br/>[[politics + government] + [committee + member]]</td><td>2,336</td></tr><tr><td>中小企業</td><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>chū-shō-ki-gyō</td><td>small-medium companies<br/>[[middle + small] + [plan + business = company]]</td><td>2,176</td></tr><tr><td>二千一年</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-sen-ichi-nen</td><td>2001 [[two + thousand + one] + year]</td><td>2,053</td></tr><tr><td>金融機関</td><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>kin-yū-ki-kan</td><td>financial institutions<br/>[[money + melt] + [mechanism + concern]]</td><td>2,051</td></tr><tr><td>携帯電話</td><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>kei-tai-den-wa</td><td>mobile phones<br/>[[carry + belt = mobile] + [electric + talk = phone]]</td><td>2,025</td></tr><tr><td>人間関係</td><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>nin-gen-kan-kei</td><td>human relations<br/>[[person + interval = human] + [connect + connect]]</td><td>1,907</td></tr><tr><td>二千二年</td><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>ni-sen-ni-nen</td><td>2002 [[two + thousand + two] + year]</td><td>1,861</td></tr><tr><td>一生懸命</td><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>is-shō-ken-mei</td><td>withutmost effort<br/>[[one + life = lifetime] + [depend + fate = effort]]</td><td>1,861</td></tr></tbody></table>
Table 11 presents the 20 most frequent 4KCWs by token frequency counts. Comparing Table 11 with Table 3, which present the 20 most frequent 3KCWs, might initially appear to somewhat undermine the claim advanced earlier that morphological structures are independent of word frequencies. Even though Table 10 clearly indicates that the [AB]+[CD] structure is the highly dominant one for 4KCWs, at 85.3% of all types, 12 of the top 20 4KCWs have [ABC]+D structures and only seven have [AB]+[CD] structures. However, it should be noted that ten of those [ABC]+D 4KCWs are referring to dates of the month, such as 三十一日 /san-jū-ichi-nichi/ *the thirty-first; 31 days*, where the ABC kanji represents 31 and the D-addition represents day, with the other two [ABC]+D 4KCWs being year designations (e.g., 二千一年 2001). As such, their occurrences within the top 20 4KCWs should be attributed to the relative frequency levels of these compound word lemmas within the BCCWJ-based CWLs that are the basis for the 3KWC and 4KCW database lists. That is, while these particular 4KCWs are of high frequencies among the 4KCW database list, as noted earlier, the 4KCWs are generally of lower frequencies compared to the 3KCWs. It is also germane in this context to note that, although 12.0% of the 3KCWs are combinations of number kanji with various numerical units and classifiers, only 1,134 (4.9%) of the 4KCW list are of such combinations, with another 332 (1.4%) 4KCW that are only numbers. Of the 1,134 4KCWs that are combinations of a number and a unit or classifier, understandably, 991 (87.4%) of those are [ABC]+D structures.<fnref n="17" />

## 4.2. Primary Morphological Structure of [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs

As the summary results in Table 10 incontestably indicate, the primary morphological structure of 4KCWs is [AB]+[CD], where two 2KCWs are combined into a larger compound unit. Notwithstanding Kobayashi et al.'s (2016, p. 117) observation that the semantic head of most [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs is on the right-side (i.e., the CD-component), with some possessing dual heads, Table 12 presents the top 13 most frequent AB-components in terms of their type counts and Table 13 presents the most

<footnote n="17">17. It bears repeating that the analyzed list of 4KCW represents only 7.75% of all 4KCWs within the CWLs, while the analyzed list of 3KCWs represents 13.5% of all 3KCWs. Thus, it is highly probable that many more 4KCWs exist that are combinations of numbers and numerical units, but which are of lower frequencies (lemma frequencies > 10). It also bears noting that compound words that consist of three number kanji and a numerical unit/classifier (e.g., 三十一 + 日) are likely to far less frequent in occurrence compared to both a single number kanji and classifier (i.e., 2KCWs such as 一回 /ik-kai/ *one-time* [one + time]) and two number kanji and classifier (i.e., 3KCWs such as 三十分 30 minutes).</footnote>
frequent 4KCWs, in terms of their token counts, for each of the most frequent AB-components.

<table><caption>TABLE 12. Top 13 most frequent AB-components of [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs according to type counts</caption><thead><tr><th>AB</th><th>Gloss</th><th>Translation and explanation</th><th>Type count</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>当該</td><td>tō-gai</td><td>appropriate; relevant<br/>[appropriate + above-stated]</td><td>112</td></tr><tr><td>経済</td><td>kei-zai</td><td>economic; finance<br/>[pass thru; expire + settle (debt, etc.)]</td><td>88</td></tr><tr><td>自己</td><td>ji-ko</td><td>self; oneself [oneself + self]</td><td>82</td></tr><tr><td>生活</td><td>sei-katsu</td><td>living; life [life + lively]</td><td>79</td></tr><tr><td>国際</td><td>koku-sai</td><td>international [country + occasion; side]</td><td>78</td></tr><tr><td>社会</td><td>sha-kai</td><td>society, community<br/>[association + meeting; association]</td><td>76</td></tr><tr><td>一般</td><td>ip-pan</td><td>general, typical [one + general]</td><td>67</td></tr><tr><td>経営</td><td>kei-ei</td><td>business, management<br/>[pass thru; expire + occupation]</td><td>66</td></tr><tr><td>基本</td><td>ki-hon</td><td>fundamental, basic [foundation + base]</td><td>61</td></tr><tr><td>教育</td><td>kyō-iku</td><td>education; instruction [teach + raise]</td><td>58</td></tr><tr><td>政治</td><td>sei-ji</td><td>politics; government [politics + reign; rule]</td><td>58</td></tr><tr><td>生産</td><td>sei-san</td><td>production; manufacture<br/>[life; birth + product; yield]</td><td>58</td></tr><tr><td>地域</td><td>chi-iki</td><td>region [earth + region]</td><td>58</td></tr></tbody></table>

Highly consistent with the large-scale BCCWJ corpus from which the 4KCW database list has been derived, the most frequent AB-components are related to general areas of human activity, such as 経済 /kei-zai/ economics, 社会 /sha-kai/ society, 経営 /kei-ei/ business and 政治 /sei-ji/ politics. The most productive AB-component is the adjective 当該, which appears as the AB-component of 112 4KCWs within the database list, such as in 当該各号 /tō-gai-kaku-gō/ relevant items [[relevant + above-stated] + [each + item]] and 当該年度 /tō-gai-nen-do/ relevant year(s) [[relevant + above-stated] + [year + time]]. Apart from 当該, the other 12 most frequent AB-compounds are either nouns or VNs. For example, the second most frequent AB-component is the noun 経済, which appears as the AB-component of 88 4KCWs, such as 経済成長 /kei-zai-sei-chō/ economic growth [[expire + settle] + [become + long]] and 経済発展 /kei-zai-hat-ten/ economic development [[expire + settle] + [start from + unfold]]. The fourth ranked AB-component of 生活 is a VN, which appears as the AB-component of 79 4KCWs, such as 生活環境 /sei-katsu-kan-kyō/ living environment [[life + lively] + [ring + boundary]] and 生活習慣 /sei-katsu-shū-kan/ lifestyle; living habits [[life + lively] + [learn + accustomed to]].
<table><caption>TABLE 13. Most frequent [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs by token counts, for each of the most frequent AB-components</caption><thead><tr><th>[AB]+[CD]</th><th>Gloss</th><th>Translation and explanation</th><th>Type count</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>当該各号</td><td>tō-gai-kaku-gō</td><td>relevant items [[relevant + above-stated] + [each + item]]</td><td>214</td></tr><tr><td>経済成長</td><td>kei-zai-sei-chō</td><td>economic growth [[expire + settle] + [become + long]]</td><td>689</td></tr><tr><td>自己責任</td><td>ji-ko-seki-nin</td><td>self-responsibility [[oneself + self] + [condemn + duty]]</td><td>356</td></tr><tr><td>生活環境</td><td>sei-katsu-kan-kyō</td><td>living environment [[life + lively] + [ring + boundary]]</td><td>822</td></tr><tr><td>国際社会</td><td>koku-sai-sha-kai</td><td>international society [[country + side] + [company + meet]]</td><td>786</td></tr><tr><td>社会主義</td><td>sha-kai-shu-gi</td><td>socialism [[association + meeting] + [main + meaning]]</td><td>563</td></tr><tr><td>一般会計</td><td>ip-pan-kai-kei</td><td>general accounting [[one + general] + [meeting + measure]]</td><td>473</td></tr><tr><td>経営戦略</td><td>kei-ei-sen-ryaku</td><td>management strategy [[expire + work] + [battle + outline]]</td><td>199</td></tr><tr><td>基本方針</td><td>ki-hon-hō-shin</td><td>basic policy [[foundation + base] + [direction + needle]]</td><td>839</td></tr><tr><td>教育訓練</td><td>kyō-iku-kun-ren</td><td>education + training [[teach + raise] + [instruct + practice]]</td><td>380</td></tr><tr><td>政治活動</td><td>sei-ji-katsu-dō</td><td>political activity [[politics + rule] + [lively + move]]</td><td>198</td></tr><tr><td>生産活動</td><td>sei-san-katsu-dō</td><td>production activity [[life + product] + [lively + move]]</td><td>281</td></tr><tr><td>地域社会</td><td>chi-iki-sha-kai</td><td>regional community [[earth + region] + [company + meet]]</td><td>1,007</td></tr></tbody></table>

Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, pp. 116–117) comment that nearly all [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs function as either nouns, VNs or ANs, as some of their examples in (18) illustrate.

(18) [AB]+[CD] nouns

財務大臣 /zai-mu-dai-jin/ *Finance Minister*
[[money + duties] + [big + retainer]]

土地家屋 /to-chi-ka-oku/ *land and buildings*
[[soil + earth] + [house + roof]]

[AB]+[CD] VN

大学改革 /dai-gaku-kai-kaku/ *university reform*
[[big + learn] + [modify + reform]]

意気消沈 /i-ki-shō-chin/ *depressed in spirits*
[[mind + spirit] + [extinguish + sink]]
[AB]+[CD] AN

利用可能 /ri-yō-ka-nō/ usable [[benefit + use] + [can + ability]]

単純明快 /tan-jun-mei-kai/ simple and clear
[[simple + pure] + [bright + pleasant]]

However, of the seven 4KCWs with [AB]+[CD] structures among the 20 most frequent by token frequency counts (Table 11), all are nouns apart from the one AN of 一生懸命 /is-shō-ken-mei/ with utmost effort [[one + life] + [depend + fate]]. Moreover, of the 4KCWs for each of the most frequent AB-components (Table 13), most are nouns, with just the three VNs of 教育訓練, 政治活動, and 生産活動.

Turning next to the CD-components of [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs, Table 14 presents the top ten most frequent CD-components in terms of their type counts and Table 15 presents the most frequent 4KCWs, in terms of their token counts, for each of the most frequent CD-components. Also highly consistent with the nature of corpora lexicons, the most frequent CD-components are also closely related to human activities. However, in contrast to the domain connotations of the AB-components, the most frequency CD-components by type counts primarily pertain to the notions of 関係 /kan-kei/ relations, 活動 /katsu-dō/ activities, 時間 /ji-kan/ time and 期間 /ki-kan/ periods, and 方法 /hō-hō/ methods, as well as 問題 /mon-dai/ problems and their 状況 /jō-kyō/ situations and 狀態 /jō-tai/ states.

<table><caption>TABLE 14. Top 10 most frequent CD-components of [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs according to type counts</caption><thead><tr><th>CD</th><th>Gloss</th><th>Translation and explanation</th><th>Type count</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>関係</td><td>kan-kei</td><td>relation; connection<br/>[connection + connection]</td><td>164</td></tr><tr><td>活動</td><td>katsu-dō</td><td>activity; action [lively + move]</td><td>156</td></tr><tr><td>以上</td><td>i-jō</td><td>... and upwards; beyond ... [by means of + up]</td><td>154</td></tr><tr><td>時間</td><td>ji-kan</td><td>time; period [time + interval]</td><td>143</td></tr><tr><td>方法</td><td>hō-hō</td><td>method; process [way + method]</td><td>133</td></tr><tr><td>期間</td><td>ki-kan</td><td>period; term [period + interval]</td><td>124</td></tr><tr><td>主義</td><td>shu-gi</td><td>doctrine; -ism [main + meaning]</td><td>118</td></tr><tr><td>問題</td><td>mon-dai</td><td>problem; issue [ask + topic]</td><td>118</td></tr><tr><td>状況</td><td>jō-kyō</td><td>situation; circumstances [state + situation]</td><td>112</td></tr><tr><td>状態</td><td>jō-tai</td><td>state; condition [state + condition]</td><td>103</td></tr></tbody></table>

The most productive CD-component is the noun 関係, which appears as the CD-component of 164 [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs within the database list, such as in 人間関係 /nin-gen-kan-kei/ human relations [[human + space] + [connect + connect]] and 信頼関係 /shin-rai-kan-kei/ relationship of mutual trust [[faith + trust] + [connect + connect]]. The second most frequent
<table><caption>TABLE 15. Most frequent [AB]+[CD] 4KCWs by token counts, for each of the most frequent CD-components</caption><thead><tr><td>[AB]+[CD]</td><td>Gloss</td><td>Translation and explanation</td><td>Type count</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>人間関係</td><td>nin-gen-kan-kei</td><td>human relations [[human + space] + [connect + connect]]</td><td>1,861</td></tr><tr><td>経済活動</td><td>kei-zai-katsu-dō</td><td>economic activity [[expire + settle] + [lively + move]]</td><td>519</td></tr><tr><td>必要以上</td><td>hitsu-yō-i-jō</td><td>more than necessary [[certain + need] + [by means of + up]]</td><td>504</td></tr><tr><td>労働時間</td><td>rō-dō-ji-kan</td><td>working hours [[labor + work] + [time + interval]]</td><td>790</td></tr><tr><td>応募方法</td><td>ō-bo-hō-hō</td><td>application method [[apply + recruit] + [way + method]]</td><td>292</td></tr><tr><td>一定期間</td><td>it-tei-ki-kan</td><td>fixed interval [[one + determine] + [period + interval]]</td><td>314</td></tr><tr><td>民主主義</td><td>min-shu-shu-gi</td><td>democracy [[people + main] + [main + meaning]]</td><td>1,102</td></tr><tr><td>環境問題</td><td>kan-kyō-mon-dai</td><td>environmental problem [[ring + boundary] + [ask + topic]]</td><td>900</td></tr><tr><td>実施状況</td><td>jis-shi-jō-kyō</td><td>implementation status [[real + perform] + [state + situation]]</td><td>326</td></tr><tr><td>健康状態</td><td>ken-kō-jō-tai</td><td>health condition [[healthy + ease] + [state + condition]]</td><td>326</td></tr></tbody></table>

CD-component is the VN of 活動, which is the only VN amongst the top ten CD-components. It is the CD-component of 156 4KCWs, such as 経済活動 /kei-zai-katsu-dō/ economic activity [[expire + settle] + [lively + move]] and 事業活動 /ji-gyō-katsu-dō/ business activities [[matter + business] + [lively + move]].

## 4.3. Secondary Morphological Structure of [ABC]+D 4KCWs

Reflecting the greater dominance of the primary [AB]+[CD] morphological structure for 4KCWs, the secondary structure of [ABC]+D only accounts for 12.1% of the 4KCW database list. Moreover, although this secondary structure closely parallels the primary [AB]+C morphological structure of 3KCWs, as noted earlier, where an additional morpheme is being attached to the end of an existing compound word, its coverage of only 12.1% stands in sharp contrast to the 77.1% prevalence of [AB]+C 3KCWs as the primary structure of 3KCWs. Moreover, further analyses of the D-additions of 4KCWs reveals that 26% are suffixes, which account for account for 61% of the [ABC]+D structures.
Table 16 presents the top ten most frequent D-additions to [ABC]+D 4KCWs by type counts and Table 17 presents the most frequent [ABC]+D 4KCWs, by token counts, for each of the most frequent D-additions.

<table><caption>TABLE 16. Top ten most frequent D-additions to [ABC]+D 4KCWs by type counts</caption><thead><tr><td>D-addition</td><td>Meaning</td><td>Type count</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>等</td><td>etc.; and so forth</td><td>156</td></tr><tr><td>円</td><td>Japanese yen</td><td>152</td></tr><tr><td>人</td><td><em>-er</em> person-indicating ending</td><td>147</td></tr><tr><td>条</td><td>article, clause, counter for articles</td><td>116</td></tr><tr><td>年</td><td>year</td><td>109</td></tr><tr><td>的</td><td><em>-ic</em> AN ending</td><td>109</td></tr><tr><td>者</td><td><em>-er</em> person-indicating ending</td><td>95</td></tr><tr><td>歳</td><td>age counter</td><td>76</td></tr><tr><td>間</td><td>between; interval</td><td>71</td></tr><tr><td>達</td><td>pluralizing ending</td><td>70</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>TABLE 17. Most frequent [ABC]+D 4KCWs by token counts, for each of the most frequent D-additions</caption><thead><tr><td>[ABC]+D</td><td>Gloss</td><td>Translation and explanation</td><td>Type count</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>高齢者等</td><td>kō-rei-sha-tō</td><td>such as the elderly [[high + age + person] + pluralizer]</td><td>93</td></tr><tr><td>千五百円</td><td>sen-go-hyaku-en</td><td>1,500 yen [[thousand + five + hundred] + yen]</td><td>691</td></tr><tr><td>被相続人</td><td>hi-sō-zoku-nin</td><td>decedent [[cover + together + continue] + person]</td><td>297</td></tr><tr><td>第十二条</td><td>dai-jū-ni-jō</td><td>article 12 [[number + ten + two] + article]</td><td>636</td></tr><tr><td>二千一年</td><td>ni-sen-ichi-nen</td><td>2001 [[two + thousand + one] + year]</td><td>2,053</td></tr><tr><td>中長期的</td><td>chū-chō-ki-teki</td><td>mid-long term-ish [[middle + long + period] + -ic]</td><td>229</td></tr><tr><td>被保険者</td><td>hi-ho-ken-sha</td><td>insured person [[cover + protect + precipitous] + person]</td><td>1,013</td></tr><tr><td>二十四歳</td><td>ni-jū-yon-sai</td><td>24 years old [[two + ten + four] + years of age]</td><td>597</td></tr><tr><td>二十年間</td><td>ni-jū-nen-kan</td><td>20 year period [[two + ten + year] + interval]</td><td>381</td></tr><tr><td>主人公達</td><td>shu-jin-kō-tachi</td><td>protagonists [[main + person + public] + pluralizer]</td><td>15</td></tr></tbody></table>

In light of the clear parallels in terms of word-formation processes, it is most expedient to first compare the most frequent C-additions of [AB]+C 3KCWs (Table 6) with the most frequent D-additions of [ABC]+D 4KCWs (Table 16). While such comparisons reveal that five
morphemes are common to both lists (i.e., the, a, na, zai, and an), clearly, there are also differences in terms of their respective rankings. For instance, the is the most frequent C-addition, occurring in 873 [AB]+C 3KCWs, but it is only the sixth most frequent as a D-addition, occurring in 109 [ABC]+D 4KCWs, such as 中長期的 /chū-chō-ki-teki/ mid-long term-ish [[middle + long + period] + -ic]. However, in demonstrating that this morpheme attaches to both many 3KCWs and many 4KCWs, these results are highly consistent with Kobayashi et al.'s (2016, p. 127) observation, noted earlier, that the is a highly productive SJ affix that attaches to various bases. The most frequent D-addition is 等 which occurs in 156 4CKWs, such as 高齢者等 /kō-rei-sha-tō/ such as the elderly [[high + age + person] + pluralizer], while it is the third most frequent C-addition, occurring in 577 3KCWs. The largest shift in the respective frequency rankings for 3KCWs and 4KCWS is for 人, which is the third most frequent D-addition, occurring in 147 4KCWs, such as 被相続人 /hi-sō-zoku-nin/ decedent [[cover + together + continue] + person], as opposed to being the tenth most frequent C-addition, occurring in 227 3KCWs.

Comparing Tables 6 and 16 also reveals that five SJ morphemes are not common to both lists, but, highly congruent with earlier remarks about the likely frequency distributions of number kanji, these D-additions attach either solely or commonly to number kanji. Accordingly, it is not surprising to discover that the most frequent D-addition is 円 /en/ Japanese yen currency, which is a D-addition to 152 4KCWs, such as 千五百円 /sen-go-hyaku-en/ 1,500 yen [[thousand + five + hundred] + yen] and of even larger sums, such as 五十万円 /go-jū-man-en/ 500,000 yen [[five + ten + ten-thousand] + yen]. The fourth most frequent D-addition is 条 /jō/ article, clause, counter for articles, which occurs in 116 4KCWs, such as 第十二条 /dai-jū-ni-jō/ article 12 [[number + ten + two] + article]. The fifth most frequent D-addition is 年 /nen/ year, which occurs in 109 4KCWs, such as 二千一年 /ni-sen-ichi-nen/ 2001 [[two + thousand + one] + year], while the eighth most frequent is 歳 /sai/ age counter, which occurs in 76 4KCWs, such as 二十四歳 /ni-jū-yon-sai/ 24 years old [[two + ten + four] + years of age]. Although the ninth most frequent D-addition of 間 /kan/ between; interval also often combines with 3KCWs that involve numbers, such as 二十年間 /ni-jū-nen-kan/ 20 year period [[two + ten + year] + interval], in such cases the C of the 3KCW invariably represents some time unit (such as minutes, days, months, and years). It can also attach to other kinds of 3KCWs, where the notion of between is spatial, such as 加盟国間 /ka-mei-koku-kan/ between member states [[add + alliance + country] + between].
### 4.4. Tertiary Morphological Structure of A+[BCD] 4KCWs

As with the secondary structure of 4KCWs, the tertiary structure of A+[BCD] has also been considerably marginalized to just 1.9% of all 4KCWs structures, due to the marked prevalence of the 4KCW primary structure. However, again, the parallels to the morphological structures of 3KCWs are present to the extent that the tertiary structure of A+[BCD] 4KCWs is similar to the secondary A+[BC] structure of 3KCWs, where an additional morpheme is being inserted at the beginning. Moreover, the tendency seen with 3KCWs to derive longer compounds by appending a final morpheme as opposed to inserting an initial morpheme is also observed for the 4KCWs. As with the secondary structure of [ABC]+D 4KCWs, further analysis of the A-additions reveals that 32% are prefixes, which account for 75% of the A+[BCD] structures.

Table 18 presents the top ten most frequent A-additions to A+[BCD] 4KCWs by type counts and Table 19 presents the most frequent A+[BCD] 4KCWs, by token counts, for each of the most frequent A-additions.

<table><caption>TABLE 18. Top ten most frequent A-additions to A+[BCD] 4KCWs by type counts</caption><thead><tr><td>A-addition</td><td>Meaning</td><td>Type count</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>約</td><td>approximately</td><td>84</td></tr><tr><td>各</td><td>each; every</td><td>46</td></tr><tr><td>総</td><td>gross, whole, general</td><td>24</td></tr><tr><td>同</td><td>same</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>新</td><td>new</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>全</td><td>all, whole</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>非</td><td>negation prefix</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>大</td><td>large; big</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>翌</td><td>the following; next</td><td>12</td></tr><tr><td>副</td><td>vice-; assistant</td><td>11</td></tr></tbody></table>

Also reflecting the close parallels in terms of word formation, there is again merit in comparing the most frequent A-additions for 3KCWs (Table 8) with the most frequent A-additions of 4KCWs (Table 18). Five morphemes are common to both lists (i.e., 大, 各, 新, 同, and 全), but the shifts in their respective ranking orders are generally not as pronounced as the shifts between the C-additions and D-additions to 3KCWs and 4KCWs, respectively. However, in sharp contrast to 御 /o/ and /go/ *honorific prefix* being the most frequent A-addition for 3KCWs in terms of type counts, in the case of A+[BCD] 4KCWs, the most frequent A-addition is 約 /yaku/ *approximately*, which is an A-addition to 84 4KCWs, even though it is not amongst the top ten as an A-addition to 3KCWs.
<table><caption>TABLE 19. Most frequent A+[BCD] 4KCWs by token counts, for each of the most frequent A-additions</caption><thead><tr><th>A+[BCD]</th><th>Gloss</th><th>Translation and explanation</th><th>Type count</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>約三十分</td><td>yaku-san-jip-pun</td><td>about 30 minutes<br/>[about + three + ten + minutes]</td><td>123</td></tr><tr><td>各市町村</td><td>kaku-shi-chō-son</td><td>each municipality<br/>[each + city + town + village]</td><td>113</td></tr><tr><td>総司令部</td><td>sō-shi-rei-bu</td><td>headquarters<br/>[general + official + orders + section]</td><td>134</td></tr><tr><td>同委員会</td><td>dō-i-in-kai</td><td>same committee<br/>[same + committee + member + meet]</td><td>116</td></tr><tr><td>新事業者</td><td>shin-ji-gyō-sha</td><td>new business person<br/>[new + thing + business + person]</td><td>94</td></tr><tr><td>全十二回</td><td>zen-jū-ni-kai</td><td>twelve times in total<br/>[all + ten + two + times]</td><td>37</td></tr><tr><td>非製造業</td><td>hi-sei-zō-gyō</td><td>nonmanufacturing sector<br/>[un + make + create + business]</td><td>115</td></tr><tr><td>大真面目</td><td>ō-majime</td><td>deadly serious<br/>[big + true + face + eye]</td><td>187</td></tr><tr><td>翌営業日</td><td>yoku-ei-gyō-bi</td><td>next working day<br/>[next + conduct + business + day]</td><td>23</td></tr><tr><td>副大統領</td><td>fuku-dai-tō-ryō</td><td>vice-president<br/>[vice + big + govern + territory]</td><td>67</td></tr></tbody></table>

As in both 約三十分 /yaku-san-jip-pun/ about 30 minutes [about + [three + ten + minutes]] and 約二百人 /yaku-ni-hyaku-nin/ about 200 people [about + [two + hundred + people]], 約 is typically inserted at the beginning of 3KCWs with [AB]+C structures, where the AB morphemes are numbers and the C-component is a numerical unit or classifier, such as minutes, people, and Japanese yen.

The second most frequent A-addition for 4KCWs is 各 /kaku/ each; every, which occurs in 46 4KCWs, such as in 各市町村 /kaku-shi-chō-son/ each municipality [each + [city + town + village]] and 各自治体 /kaku-ji-chitai/ each municipality [each + [[self + rule + body]]]. Its ranking as the second most frequent A-addition is comparable to its ranking as the third most frequent A-addition for 3KCWs, which underscores the general productivity of this SJ morpheme as a prefix of both 3KCW and 4KCWs. Although not appearing within the top ten A-additions for 3KCWs, the third most frequent for 4KCWs is 総 /sō/ gross, whole, general, which occurs in 24 4KCWs, such as 総司令部 /sō-shi-rei-bu/ headquarters [general + [official + orders + section]] and 総事業費 /sō-ji-gyō-hi/ total operating expenses [gross + [matter + business + expenses]].

Of the four A-additions that function as negative prefixes (Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016), as noted earlier, only 非 /hi/ negation features within the top ten most frequent A-additions for 4KCWs,
even though it was not amongst the top ten for 3KCWs. It occurs in 16 4KCWs, such as 非製造業 /hi-sei-zō-gyō/ *nonmanufacturing sector* [un + [make + create + business]] and 非喫煙者 /hi-kitsu-en-sha/ *non-smoker* [non + [consume + smoke + person]].

### 4.5. Other 4KCW Morphological Structures

Our analysis of the morphological structures of the 4KCW database reveals that a large majority (85.3%) have [AB]+[CD] structures, being the combination of two 2KCWs. The secondary and tertiary structures of 4KCWs involve one morpheme being added to an existing 3KCW, which together account for 14.0% of 4KCWs. However, as Table 10 also indicates, eight other morphological structures underlie a small percentage of 4KCWs. Accordingly, this section turns to present examples of those 4KCW structures.

For the 4KCWs, the first of these more marginal morphological structures is non-divisible (0.1%), which, as with the 3KCWs, is necessary to handle a small set of exceptions. The examples provided in (19) also illustrates that although the compound word's etymology and morphological structure are not clear, the meanings of the component morphemes are often related to the overall meaning.

#### (19) Non-divisible

炭水化物 /tan-sui-ka-butsu/ *carbobydrate*
[coal + water + change + matter]

不可思议 /fu-ka-shi-gi/ *mystery; unfathomable*
[negative + can + think + debate]

The second of the marginal morphological structures is [A(CD)*]+[BCD] (0.1%), where the CD-component of an [ACD] 2KCW is omitted and the resultant A is attached to a related [BCD] 3KCW. This is also a form of clipping, as noted earlier, and, once again, this structure may appear to resemble superficially the A+[BCD] structure outlined above, to the extent that an A-component is being inserted before a [BCD] 3KCW. However, as with the [A(C*)]+[BC] structure of 3KCWs, the [A(CD)*]+[BCD] structure crucially hinges on the semantic relationship between the [ACD] and [BCD] 3KCWs, due to their shared CD-components, as the examples in (20) illustrates.

#### (20) [A(CD*)]+[BCD] (with (*CD) omitted)

小中学生 /shō-chū-gaku-sei/ *elementary and junior-high school students*
[小 of 小学生 elementary school student + [中学生 junior-high school student]]

土日曜日 /do-nichi-yō-bi/ *Saturday and Sunday*
[土 of 土曜日 Saturday + [日曜日 Sunday]]s
The third of the marginal morphological structures is [A(D*)]+[B(D*)]+[CD] (0.1%), where (D*) is omitted from both an [A(D*)] and a [B(D*)] 2KCW and the resultant A and B morphemes are inserted at the beginning of a CD 2KCW. As yet another example of a compound word formation that involves clipping, this structure also attests to the fact that the clipping process is a commonplace phenomenon. It is also essential to carefully differentiate this [A(D*)]+[B(D*)]+[CD] structure from the primary 4KCW structure of [AB]+[CD]. Although it may again potentially appear as if an [AB] 2KCW is being combined with a [CD] 2KCW, crucially, the A and B morphemes that are being inserted before the [CD] 2KCW here do not occur together as a 2KCW. This morphological structure also depends on the semantic connections between three 2KCWs due to the D component that is shared by all, as the examples in (21) highlight.

(21) [A(D*)]+[B(D*)]+[CD] (with both (*D) omitted)

陸海空軍 /riku-kai-kū-gun/ land, sea and air forces
[land + sea + air + troops] [陸 of 陸軍 land forces + 海 of 海軍
navy + [空軍 air force]]

農林漁業 /nō-rin-gyo-gyō/ agriculture, forestry and fishing
[farm + forest + fish + industry] [農 of 農業 agriculture + 林 of
林業 forestry + [漁業 fishing industry]]

The fourth of the marginal morphological structures is A+B+C+D (0.1%), as the concatenation of four morphemes that together constitute a set of things, with the examples in (22) being prototypical.

(22) A+B+C+D

春夏秋冬 /shun-ka-shū-tō/ four seasons
[spring + summer + autumn + winter]

喜怒哀樂 /ki-do-ai-raku/ human emotions
[joy + anger + grief + pleasure]

The fifth of the marginal morphological structures is phonological transcription (当て字) (0.1%). As explained earlier for the 3KCWs structures, there are also 4KCWs where the kanji are being used conventionally to represent the word's syllables, as in (23).

(23) Phonological transcriptions (当て字)

滅茶滅茶 /me-cha-me-cha/ disorderly, absurd; excessive
[destroy + tea + destroy + tea]

無理矢理 /mu-ri-ya-ri/ forcibly; against one's will
[nothing + reason + arrow + reason]

The sixth of the marginal morphological structures for 4KCWs is [AB]+C+D (0.0%), where C and D morphemes are being attached to an [AB] 2KCW. This structure should also be distinguished from the primary morphological structure of [AB]+[CD], because, as with the A and
B morphemes inserted before a CD 2KCW in the [A(D*)]+[B(D*)]+[CD]
structure, the C and D morphemes that are attached to form [AB]+C+D
structures do not occur together as an independent 2KCW. The AB com-
ponents of the 4KCWs that conform to this structure are number kanji
and the C morpheme is 箕 /ka/ *counter for articles*, as the examples in (24).

(24) [AB]+C+D

十二箇月 /jū-ni-ka-getsu/ 12 month (period)
[[ten + two] + counter + month]

十一箇国 /jū-ichi-ka-koku/ 11 countries
[[ten + one] + counter + country]

The seventh of the marginal morphological structures is monomorphemic words (熟字訓) (0.0%). Again, in contrast to phonological transcriptions, although there is usually no phonological correspondence between the elements of the graphematic representation and the compound word pronunciation, the meanings of the component kanji usually relate to the word's overall meaning, which is the case with the example in (25).

(25) Monomorphemic words (熟字訓)

再從兄弟 /haitoko/ second cousin
[again + accompany + elder brother + younger brother]

The eighth and final of the marginal morphological structures for 4KCWs is [A(D*)]+[BCD] (0.0%), where the D-component of an AD 2KCW is omitted and inserted at the beginning of an BCD 3KCW. It is also important to distinguish this structure from both the secondary structure of A+[BCD] and from the second of the more marginal structures of [A(CD)*]+[BCD] with the (CD) element of the A(CD) 3KCW omitted. As with the second of the marginal structures, the distinction is well motivated based on the semantic connection between the D-component of the [A(D*)] 2KCW and the D component of the [BCD] 3KCW, as the example in (26) illustrate.

(26) [A(D*)]+[BCD] (with (*D) omitted)

産婦人科 /san-fu-jin-ka/ maternity and gynaecology
[産 of 産科 obstetrics + [婦人科 gynaecology]]

5. Concluding Remarks

This paper has outlined the construction of two new databases of
3KCWs and 4KCWs, as key components for a larger database project
concerned with Japanese lexical properties (Joyce, Hodošček, and Ma-
suda, 2017; Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa, 2014). More specifically, this pa-
per has focused on describing the results of analysing the extracted data-
base lists according to the morphological structures that underlie the 3KCWs and 4KCWs, respectively. The results provide tangible quantitative indications of the degrees to which the dominant morphological structures differ for 3KCWs and 4KCWs (Kageyama and Saito, 2016; Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016; Shibatani, 1990; Tamura, 1984; 1985).

In the case of the 3KCW database, although eight structures were identified in total, the analysis results clearly show that just two morphological structures underlie the vast majority (98.4%) of the 23,046 3KCWs. Moreover, although both structures involve adding a morpheme to an existing 2KCW, the results also reveal a striking preference for attaching an morpheme to the end of an existing 2KCW, such that the primary morphological structure of [AB]+C accounts for 77.1% of the 3KCWs. In comparison, the secondary structure of A+[BC], where the additional morpheme is added to the beginning of a 2KCW, only accounts for 21.3% of the 3KCWs. In sharp contrast to the results for the 3KCWs, in the case of the 4KCW database, although 11 structures were identified in total, the analysis results indicate that the dominant morphological structure of 4KCWs is overwhelmingly [AB]+[CD], where two 2KCWs are combined by compounding processes, and which account for 85.3% of the 23,159 4KCWs. Notwithstanding the pervasive nature of the primary structure, still, a considerable number of 4KCWs are formed by adding a morpheme to an existing 3KCW, where a marked preference for attachment to the end of compound words is also observed. Thus, at much reduced proportions compared to 3KCWs, for 4KCWs, the secondary structure is [ABC]+D, which accounts for 12.1%, and the tertiary structure is A+[BCD], which accounts for 1.9%.

Taken together, the results of analyzing the morphological structures of both database lists unquestionably underscore the immense significance of 2KCWs within the Japanese lexicon, not only as words in their own right, but as the component elements of longer compound words (Joyce, 2011; Joyce, Hodošček, and Masuda, 2017; Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa, 2014; Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016; Nomura, 1975; 1988). Overall, these findings are entirely consistent with the morphographic nature of kanji (Joyce, 2011; Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama, 2016) because they vividly highlight how the concatenation of kanji in graphematically representing the vast majority of Japanese compound words is primarily the province of the morphological processes that underlie the formation of Japanese compound words. That is, while there are undeniably a limited number of exceptions, such as the non-divisible, phonological transcription and monomorphemic structures, the surface graphematic forms of most Japanese compound words conform to the morphographic principle (Joyce, 2011). However, kanji are associated with both NJ and SJ morphemes, many with multiple NJ and SJ allomorphs, and the status of those morphemes—as either free, bound or affixes—is often context-dependent. Accordingly, the present analyses
of the rich morphological structures of Japanese compound words can potentially further elucidate the intricate nature of the morphographic principle in the case of the JWS; a topic that undoubtedly warrants greater attention from the perspective of writing systems research.

As indicated earlier, the task of analyzing the morphological structures of 3KCWs and 4KCWs has been greatly facilitated by the fact that, in fundamentally conforming to the morphographic principle, their structures are generally highly transparent. However, as also acknowledged, reflecting the productive nature of SJ morphemes, some compound words are conceivably open to alternative interpretations, such as **農業者** *agricultural worker*. Accordingly, even though the most plausible interpretation of **農業者** is to regard it as an example of the [AB]+C structure, we are also planning to conduct studies to obtain native-speaker rankings related to the psychological validity and credibility of the morphological structures. Such studies will also investigate the extent to which semantic shifts in the meanings of compound words might influence native-speaker interpretations of their morphological structures. For instance, although the meanings of the constituent morphemes are clear and the morphological structure of **新幹線 /shin-kan-sen**/[new + [trunk + line]] is unquestionably A+[BC], the compound word's contemporary meaning of **bullet train** represents a substantial semantic shift.

Moreover, the conducted analyses of the morphological structures of both 3KCWs and 4KCWs are essential for preparing to conduct various visual word recognition experiments to further investigate Kobayashi et al.'s (2016, p. 129) claims that kanji facilitate meaning comprehension, which have significant implications for the organization of morphological information within the mental lexicon. Joyce (2002; 2004) and Masuda and Joyce (2018) have already conducted a series of psycholinguistic experiments that have employed the constituent-priming paradigm to examine lexical-decision task responses to 2KCWs. As those studies have generally observed robust patterns of facilitated reaction times due to the prior presentation of the constituent kanji, across a variety of conditions, including very brief stimulus onset asynchrony intervals, the natural next steps are to extend this experimental approach to investigate the recognition processes of 3KCWs and 4KCWs. To that aim, the analyses of their morphological structures will be invaluable in terms of designing various experimental conditions and selecting suitable stimuli.

As already noted, these 3KCW and 4KCW databases have been compiled as new components of a larger database project concerned with various Japanese lexical properties (Joyce, Hodošček, and Masuda, 2017; Joyce, Masuda, and Ogawa, 2014; Masuda and Joyce, 2005; Masuda, Joyce, et al., 2014). In being extracted from Joyce, Hodošček, and Nishina (2012) CWLs, which were, in turn, extracted from the BCCJW, both database lists have automatically inherited a number of valuable data-fields, such as word class, lexical strata, token frequencies of lemma
and orthographic base forms and pronunciation(s). In addition to those inherited data-fields, naturally, the work of analysing the morphological structures has itself generated a number of additional fields beyond just assigning a structure category, such as identifying all possible graphematic overlaps and counts related to morphological family sizes. These will all be checked as the work of integrating these new database components within the larger database progresses and as further database components are developed in the future, such as the planned analyses of the morphological structures of five-kanji compound words.<fnref n="18" /> Thus, the present analyses of the morphological structures of both 3KCWs and 4KCWs represent a significance contribution to the larger database project of mapping out various Japanese lexical properties.

## References

Agency for Cultural Affairs [文化庁] (2010). “常用漢字表 [Jōyō kanji list].” In: URL: http://kokugo.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/joho/kijun/naikaku/pdf/joyokanjihyo_20101130.pdf.

Backhouse, A.E. (1984). "Aspects of the graphological structure of Japanese." In: *Visible Language* 18.3, pp. 219–228.

Igarashi, Yuko (2007). “The changing role of katakana in the Japanese writing system: Processing and pedagogical dimensions for native speakers and foreign learners.” PhD thesis. University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Joyce, Terry (2002). “Constituent-morpheme priming: Implications from the morphology of two-kanji compound words.” In: *Japanese Psychological Research* 44, pp. 79–90.

——— (2004). “Modeling the Japanese mental lexicon: Morphological, orthographic and phonological considerations.” In: *Advances in Psychological Research: Volume*. Ed. by S.P. Shohov. Vol. 31. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science, pp. 27–61.

——— (2011). “The significance of the morphographic principle for the classification of writing-systems.” In: *Written Language & Literacy* 14.1, pp. 58–81.

Joyce, Terry, Bor Hodošček, and Hisashi Masuda (2017). “Constructing an ontology and database of Japanese lexical properties: Handling the orthographic complexity.” In: *Written Language & Literacy* 20.1, pp. 27–51.

<footnote n="18">18. Although longer Japanese compound words are frequently attested, as Kobayashi, Yamashita, and Kageyama (2016, pp. 114–115) observe, as longer compound words invariably involve recursive combinations of existing shorter compound words. Thus, the returns from analyzing beyond five-kanji compound words are likely to be rather limited.</footnote>
Joyce, Terry, Bor Hodošček, and Kikuko Nishina (2012). "Orthographic representation and variation within the Japanese writing system: Some corpus-based observations." In: *Written Language & Literacy* 15.2, pp. 254–278.

Joyce, Terry and Hisashi Masuda (2018). "Introduction to the multi-script Japanese writing system and word processing." In: *Writing systems, reading processes, and cross-linguistic influences: Reflections from the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages*. Ed. by Hye Pae. Vol. 7. Bilingual Processing and Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 179–199.

——— (2019). "On the notions of graphematic representation and orthography from the perspective of the Japanese writing system." In: *Written Language & Literacy* 22.2, pp. 248–280.

Joyce, Terry, Hisashi Masuda, and Taeko Ogawa (2014). "Jōyō kanji as core building blocks of the Japanese writing system: Some observations from database construction." In: *Written Language & Literacy* 17.2, pp. 173–194.

Kageyama, Taro and Michiaki Saito (2016). "Vocabulary strata and word formation processes." In: *Handbook of Japanese lexicon and word formation*. Ed. by Taro Kageyama and Hideki Kishimoto. Vol. 3. Handbooks of Japanese Language and Linguistics. Boston, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 11–50.

Kess, Joseph F. and Tadao Miyamoto (1999). *The Japanese mental lexicon: Psycholinguistics studies of kana and kanji processing*. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Kobayashi, Hideki, Kiyo Yamashita, and Taro Kageyama (2016). "Sino-Japanese words." In: *Handbook of Japanese lexicon and word formation*. Ed. by Taro Kageyama and Hideki Kishimoto. Vol. 3. Handbooks of Japanese Language and Linguistics. Boston, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 93–131.

Konno, Shinji [今野真二] (2013). 正書法のない日本語 [*The Japanese language lacks orthography*]. 東京 [Tokyo]: 岩波書店 [Iwanami Shoten].

Lurie, David B. (2012). "The development of writing in Japan." In: *The shape of script: How and why writing systems change*. Ed. by S.D. Houston. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 159–185.

Maekawa, Kikuo et al. (2013). "Balanced corpus of contemporary written Japanese." In: *Language Resources and Evaluation*, pp. 1–27.

Masuda, Hisashi and Terry Joyce (2005). "A database of two-kanji compound words featuring morphological family, morphological structure, and semantic category data." In: *Corpus Studies on Japanese Kanji*. Ed. by Katsuo Tamaoka. Vol. 10. Glottometrics. Tokyo, Japan: Hituzi Syobo, Lüdenschied, Germany: RAM-Verlag, pp. 30–44.

——— (2018). "Constituent-priming investigations of the morphological activation of Japanese compound words." In: *Writing systems, reading processes, and cross-linguistic influences: Reflections from the Chinese,*
*Japanese and Korean languages*. Ed. by Hye Pae. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 221–244.

Masuda, Hisashi and Terry Joyce (2019). "A database of three-kanji compound words in Japanese, with particular focus on their morphological structures." Poster presentation given as the 'Diversity of writing systems: Embracing multiple perspectives', 12th International Workshop on Written Language and Literacy, Faculty of Classics, Cambridge University, UK.

Masuda, Hisashi, Terry Joyce, et al. (2014). "A database of semantic transparency ratings for two-kanji Japanese compound words." Poster presentation given at 'Orthographic Databases and Lexicons': 9th International Workshop on Writing Systems and Literacy, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Miller, Laura (2011). "Subversive script and novel graphs in Japanese girls' culture." In: *Language & Communication* 31.1, pp. 16–26.

Nomura, Masaaki [野村雅昭] (1975). "四字漢語の構造 [The structure of four-kanji Sino-Japanese words]." In: 電子計算機による国語研究 [Studies in Computational Linguistics] 7, pp. 36–80.

——— (1988). "二字漢語の構造 [The structure of two-kanji Sino-Japanese words]." In: *日本語学 [Japanese Studies]* 7.5, pp. 44–55.

Robertson, Wesley C. (2015). "Orthography, foreigners, and fluency: Indexicality and script selection in Japanese manga." In: *Japanese Studies* 35.2, pp. 205–222.

——— (2017). "He's more katakana than kanji: Indexing identity and self-presentation through script selection in Japanese manga (comics)." In: *Journal of Sociolinguistics* 21.4, pp. 497–520.

Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). *The Languages of Japan*. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Shinmura, Izuru [新村出], ed. (1995). *広辞苑 [Japanese dictionary]*. 5th ed. 東京 [Tokyo]: 岩波書店 [Iwanami Shoten].

——— ed. (2008). *広辞苑 [Japanese dictionary]*. 6th ed. 東京 [Tokyo]: 岩波書店 [Iwanami Shoten].

Smith, Janet S. (Shibamoto) (1996). "Japanese writing." In: *The world's writing systems*. Ed. by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 209–217.

Smith, Janet S. (Shibamoto) and David L. Schmidt (1996). "Variability in written Japanese: Towards a sociolinguistics of script choice." In: *Visible Language* 30.1, pp. 47–71.

Tamamura, Fumio [玉村文郎] (1984). *日本語教育指導参考書12: 語彙の研究と教育 (上) [Japanese language education reference guides 12: Lexical research and education 1]*. 東京 [Tokyo]: 大蔵省印刷局 [Ookurashou Insatsukyoku].

——— (1985). *日本語教育指導参考書13: 語彙の研究と教育 (下) [Japanese language education reference guides 13: Lexical research and education 2]*. 東京 [Tokyo]: 大蔵省印刷局 [Ookurashou Insatsukyoku].
Taylor, Insup and M. Martin Taylor (2014). *Writing and literacy in Chinese, *Korean and Japanese*. Vol. 14. Studies in Written Language and Literacy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Tranter, Nicolas (2008). "Nonconventional script choice in Japan." In: *International Journal of the Sociology of Language* 192, pp. 133–151.
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>
# A Modular Theoretic Approach to the Japanese Writing System: Possibilities and Challenges

Keisuke Honda

*Abstract.* The Modular Theory of Writing Systems (MT) provides a three-module model of the correspondence between the elements of a script and the properties of a language at the level of individual words. Characterised by its non-derivational linguistic approach, MT has the potential to develop into a general theory of script-to-language relationship in any type of writing system. However, it is currently focused on the analysis of modern alphabetic systems, with little regard for non-alphabetic systems. To examine the theory's compatibility with a typologically wider range of writing systems, the present paper discusses the functional aspects of the present-day Japanese writing system within the MT framework. This system offers a good testing ground because it makes a mixed use of logographic, moraic and alphabetic scripts. The discussion highlights the possibilities and challenges of current MT and presents some proposals to increase its applicability to non-alphabetic systems.

## Introduction

Writing allows us to communicate linguistic messages through graphic representations in a conventional and systematic way (Gelb, 1963, pp. 11–20; DeFrancis, 1989, pp. 4–6; Coulmas, 2003, pp. 1–17; Rogers, 2005, pp. 2–4; Sampson, 2015, pp. 18–39; Daniels, 2018, pp. 156–157). Each writing system enables this function by pairing a particular script with a specific language according to a unique set of conventions. Despite their rich diversity, the world's writing systems show important similarities—as well as differences—in the way they relate the elements of a script to the properties of a language (e.g., Justeson, 1976, pp. 58–

Keisuke Honda

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>

0000-0003-4228-5406

Imperial College London, Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication
South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom

University of Oxford, Oxford University Language Centre
12 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HT, United Kingdom
E-mail: kdhonda@gmail.com

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*
Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 5.
Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 621–643. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-hond
ISBN: 978-2-9570549-7-8, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-9-2
76). An important task of grapholinguistics, then, is to develop a theo-
retical framework for describing and explaining this relationship in and
across writing systems.<fnref n="1" />

It is in this context that the present paper focuses on the Modular
Theory of Writing Systems (MT: Neef, 2012; 2015). MT provides a gen-
eral model of script-to-language relationship at the level of individual
words, conceptualised in terms of three modules called *language system*,
*graphematics* and *systematic orthography* (Section 1). This model is built on
two important assumptions that distinguish it from previous models
of writing systems. The first assumption is that every writing system
is constructed on an abstract language system (Neef, 2012, p. 4; 2015,
p. 709). This notion opens the way for a uniform linguistic analysis of
writing systems without viewing them as a surrogate of concrete speech
(cf. Saussure, 1983/1916, p. 45; Bloomfield, 1933, p. 21) or as autonomous
sign systems (cf. Vachek, 1973, pp. 14–17; Harris, 1995, pp. 56–63). The
second assumption is that such a linguistically based analysis of writing
systems should be based on declarative descriptions of the underlying
language systems (Neef, 2015, p. 709). This paradigm accounts for prop-
erties of linguistic structure in terms of well-formedness conditions ap-
plicable to a single level of representation, instead of derivational rules
converting one level of representation into another (cf. Chomsky and
Halle, 1968, p. 49; Chomsky, 1970, pp. 287–294; Sproat, 2000, pp. 18–
19). With this non-derivational linguistic approach, MT has the poten-
tial to expand into a general theory of how words are written in different
writing systems (Section 1.3).

Crucially, however, the current MT model has a fairly limited scope
of application. It draws almost entirely on observations of modern
alphabetic systems like German and English, where characters and
character combinations relate primarily to individual vowels and con-
sonants.<fnref n="2" /> In other words, MT makes virtually no mention of non-
alphabetic systems, which may be either phonographic or highly lo-

<footnote n="1">1. Neef (2015, p. 711) defines grapholinguistics as “[t]he linguistic sub discipline dealing with the scientific study of all aspects of written language”. Similarly, Haralambous (2020, p. 12), states that this field of research “aims to study aspects of language that are particular to its written representation, at all levels of linguistics”. As is evident from the title of the present volume and its preceding conference, the term ‘grapholinguistics’ is becoming increasingly accepted as an alternative to other terms such as ‘grammatology’, ‘graphology’, ‘graphemics’, ‘graphonomy’ and ‘writing systems research’. See Daniels (2018, pp. 4–5) for an overview of the various designations given to the study of writing, writing systems and written language.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. The present paper uses ‘alphabetic’ to refer to any writing system based on both vocalic and consonantal segments. Some might prefer ‘segmental’, which appears to specify the type of underlying phonological unit. However, this alternative term is too broad because it covers all subtypes of segment-based systems without reference to the presence or absence of vocalic signs or the spatial arrangement of segmental signs (e.g., compare the writing systems of Finnish, Arabic, Hindi and Korean; for</footnote>
gographic in nature (Section 1.2). This is a major drawback given the prevalence of such systems throughout the history of writing around the world. Hence, despite its designation as a “theory of writing systems” (Neef, 2015, p. 708), MT in its present form is effectively a theory of alphabetic systems. Therefore, it remains an open question whether it can actually be expanded into a full-fledged theory of script-to-language relationship across different types of writing systems.

This paper aims to address the above question through a partial analysis of the current Japanese writing system. As widely documented, this system employs a mixture of four main scripts that function as typologically distinct sets of written signs: logographic *kanji* (漢字), moraic *biragana* (平仮名) and *katakana* (片仮名), and alphabetic *rōmaji* (ローマ字) (e.g., Smith, 1996, pp. 209–213; Sasahara, 2001, pp. 704–705; Honda, 2012, pp. 38–71; Taylor and Taylor, 2014, pp. 271–302). As such, it serves as a useful test case for examining the adaptability of MT to non-alphabetic systems. Through a discussion of the main characteristics of the Japanese writing system, the present paper seeks to highlight the possibilities and challenges of the current MT model. The discussion is organised as follows. Section 1 introduces the key concepts of MT. Section 2 discusses their applicability to the analysis of how the four scripts are used to write words in Japanese. Section 3 examines the notions of logography and logographic systems assumed in MT. Section 4 summarises the discussion and draws conclusions.

# 1. Key Concepts of MT

As already mentioned, current MT is essentially a theory of alphabetic systems, where the elements of a script relate mainly to the segmental level of phonology. It is built on specific assumptions and claims about the formal and functional elements of writing systems (Section 1.1), the distinction between phonographic and logographic systems (Section 1.2), and the architecture of alphabetic systems (Section 1.3).

## 1.1. Formal and Functional Elements

Every writing system employs a certain number of discrete graphic marks. Each mark can take a variety of similar but different shapes in written, printed, or electronically displayed texts. Thus, one can speak

<footnote>discussions, see Faber, 1992, pp. 118–123, and Gnanadesikan, 2017, pp. 19–31). While a more accurate description would be obtained by adopting a combinatorial term like ‘fully vowelled linear segmentary’ (Gnanadesikan, 2017, p. 28), this option makes it difficult to refer to all non-alphabetic systems as a single class.</footnote>
of a set of abstract forms embodied by a larger set of concrete shapes. In MT terminology (Neef, 2015, pp. 711–713), *script* and *character* respectively denote any such abstract set and each member thereof, whereas *font* and *glyph* denote their concrete counterparts.<fnref n="3" /> This is illustrated by the lower case Roman script in (1); the pipes | | enclose each character of the script, and the arrow shows the character’s correspondence to the glyphs of different fonts on the right side.

(1) Script : Character :: Font : Glyph

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

Importantly, MT views scripts and characters (as well as fonts and glyphs) as purely formal elements of writing. For a script to function as a writing system, it must be paired with a particular language in a systematic way. At the basis of this pairing is a conventional association between characters or character combinations and different properties of the language in question. In the English writing system, for example, characters are associated with phonological units (e.g., |p| → [p]), morphosyntactic units (e.g., |$| → DOLLAR) or syntactic information (e.g., |?| → ‘interrogative’). Using a dyadic model of signs (Saussure, 1983/1916, pp. 99–100), one may speak of *written signs*, each comprising a character or character combination as the signifier and a linguistic property or a piece of linguistic information as the signified.<fnref n="4" /> MT distinguishes four types of written signs based on their signifieds (Neef, 2015, p. 711). The present paper assumes this classification with a partly modified terminology as shown below, where the angle brackets <> enclose a written sign: *phonographs* correspond to phonological units (2a), *logographs* to morphosyntactic units (2b), *ciphers* to numbers (2c), and *punctuation marks* to information about linguistic structure (2d).<fnref n="5" />

<footnote n="3">3. As ‘font’ is conventionally associated with typography, ‘hand’ might be a better alternative for referring to any set of glyphs used in handwriting (Douglas, 2017, pp. 5–6).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4. Defined this way, the notion of ‘written sign’ is comparable with the semiotic reinterpretation of ‘grapheme’ proposed by Meletis (2019, p. 9–10). These and related concepts and terms require further discussion in the future.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5. Neef (2015, p. 712) uses ‘letters’ and ‘logographs’ to refer to (2a) and (2b), respectively. This paper adopts ‘phonographs’ for the first class instead, as ‘letters’ are conventionally restricted to the signs of phonological segments employed in alphabetic and consonantal systems (Sampson, 2015, pp. 10–11). Besides, for both (2a) and (2b), the *-graph* ending is preferred over the original *-gram* ending because only the former can be used in their derived forms (e.g., phonographic versus *phonogram-*)</footnote>
(2) Written signs

a. `<p>` : |p| → [p]

b. `<$>` : |$| → DOLLAR

c. `<1>` : |1| → ONE

d. `<>` : |?| → 'interrogative'

Using these notions, MT distinguishes three aspects of writing sys-
tems. The first two belong to the formal aspect, one being concrete (i.e.,
glyphs and fonts) and the other being more abstract (i.e., characters and
scripts). The third one is the functional aspect, where graphic signifiers
are linked with linguistic signifieds (i.e., written signs). Each of these
aspects is studied in different subfields of grapholinguistics: *typography*
(3a) and *graphetics* (3b) are concerned with the formal aspects of writing
systems, and MT with their functional aspects (3c) (Neef, 2015, p. 711).

(3) Subfields of grapholinguistics

a. Typography concerns glyphs and fonts

b. Graphetics concerns characters and scripts

c. MT concerns written signs

1.2. Phonographic and Logographic Systems

MT adopts a traditional distinction of two broad types of writing sys-
tems according to the main type of written signs used therein (Neef,
2015, p. 713). In this scheme, a writing system is described as being
*phonographic* if the characters principally function as phonographs, or *logo-
graphic* if they mainly operate as logographs (e.g., Sampson, 2015, pp. 24–
26).⁶

Phonographic systems are further divided into subtypes according
to the main type of phonological unit represented by the phonographs.
While different studies use different classifications and terminologies,
common labels include full segmental or alphabetic (e.g., English), con-
sonantal or abjad (e.g., Arabic), alphasyllabic or abugida (e.g., Hindi),

mic). It may also be possible to treat ciphers (2c) as a subclass of logographs be-
cause they are associated with numerals as morphosyntactic units (e.g., ONE) rather
than numerical concepts (e.g., 'lowest cardinal number'); however, this treatment re-
quires further elaboration because some numerical notation systems operate in no-
tably different ways from glottographic (i.e., language-based) notations (Pettersson,
1996, pp. 798-805; Sproat, 2000, p. 198). The present classification also needs to be
refined to deal with other types of non-glottographic signs such as semantic classifiers
and ideographs attested across writing systems.

6. Some studies use the labels *cenemic* and *pleremic* to refer to these types of writing systems (Haas, 1983, p. 16). For a general overview of writing system typologies, see Daniels (1996, pp. 8–10) and Joyce and Borgwaldt (2011, pp. 1–6). For discussions, see Sproat (2000, pp. 132–144), Rogers (2005, pp. 269–279), Sampson (2015, pp. 18–39) and Joyce (2016, pp. 288–297).
moraic or core syllabic (e.g., Cherokee), full syllabic (e.g., Modern Yi), and so on.<fnref n="7" /> Logographic systems, on the other hand, are considered to have only one subtype, namely morphemic systems employing mainly morphographs or the signs of individual morphemes (Hill, 1967, p. 93). This is summarised schematically in (4); the morphemic nature of logographic systems will be discussed in Section 3.

(4) Phonographic and logographic systems

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /></figure>

## 1.3. Three Modules

As already mentioned, the current MT model is primarily concerned with the script-to-language relationship within words in modern alphabetic systems. This relationship is captured at a single level of abstraction, namely in terms of the correspondence between characters (as opposed to glyphs) or character combinations and phonological segments (as opposed to phones). Regarding the latter, MT's non-derivational linguistic approach entails an exclusive focus placed on the surface (as opposed to underlying) phonological representation. This is shown in (5), exemplified by the relationship between the written and phonological forms of the English word *writing*.

(5) Script-to-language relationship for <writing>

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /></figure>

MT assumes three modules to explain this relationship. The first module is the *language system*, which provides the foundation for each writing system to function as a language-based sign system (Neef, 2012, p. 4; Neef, 2015, pp. 709–711). Adopting the structural and generative conception of language, MT distinguishes two parts for each language system: *grammar*, which captures the regular aspects of a language, and *lexicon*, which covers all irregular properties in the same language. More specifically, grammar comprises phonology, morphology,

<footnote n="7">7. For a recent review and discussion of typologies of phonographic systems, see Sproat (2000, pp. 131–144), Ratcliffe (2001, pp. 3–6), Buckley (2018, pp. 32–46) and Gnanadesikan (2017, pp. 16–30).</footnote>
semantics and syntax, whereas lexicon defines morphemes as the arbitrary associations of forms and meanings.<fnref n="8" />

A language system enables another module called *graphematics* to provide possible written representations of individual words in that language (Neef, 2012, pp. 4–6; Neef, 2015, pp. 713–714). This second module defines all conventional associations between characters or character combinations and phonological segments permitted in the writing system. If the graphematics allows more than one way to represent the same phonological segment, it generates a set of theoretically possible spellings for each word containing that segment. In MT terminology, this set is known as the *graphematic solution space* (Neef, 2012, pp. 10–11; Neef, 2015, p. 716). To illustrate, German [vɑ] denotes several distinct meanings including ‘whale’, ‘choice’ and different place names (Neef, 2012, pp. 10–11). It is possible to spell this phonological form in a number of different ways because the German graphematics permits multiple characters and character combinations to represent its constituent segments (6).

(6) German graphematics for [v], [ɑ], [l]<fnref n="9" />
a. <w> ∨ <v> ∨ <vh> → [v]
b. <a> ∨ <aa> ∨ <ah> → [ɑ]
c. <l> ∨ <ll> ∨ <lh> → [l]

Consequently, there is a large graphematic solution space for each of the homophonous words. It contains both attested spellings and unattested but theoretically possible spellings (7).

(7) German graphematic solution space for [vɑl]
<wal> <waal> <wahl> <whal> <whaal> <whahl> <walh> ...
<val> <vaal> <vahl> <vhal> <vhaal> <vhahl> <valh> ...

In actuality, however, different spellings are used by convention to distinguish between the homophones (8). In MT, this is explained by the third module called *systematic orthography*, which prescribes how to spell individual words correctly within the limitation of the graphematic solution space (Neef, 2012, pp. 11–13; 2015, pp. 715–718). These constraints are ‘systematic’ in the sense that they apply to particular layers

<footnote n="8">8. MT assumes that a writing system can refer to any part of the grammar and lexicon of a language. This point is exemplified by the spellings of French [ɛme] in different inflections (e.g., <aimer> ‘love-INF’ versus <aimez> ‘love-3.PL’), which presuppose reference to both the phonological and morphosyntactic aspects of the forms in question (Neef, 2015, p. 710).</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9. Throughout this paper, the disjunction symbol <∨> is used to indicate the presence of multiple items on either side of graphematic correspondence. There can be two or more characters or character combinations associated with a single linguistic property, or two or more linguistic properties associated with a single character or character combination.</footnote>
of the vocabulary. For example, an analysis of German spelling justifies a constraint that `<aa>` cannot be used to represent `[a]` (8a,b) except in foreign proper names (8c,d).

(8) German orthographic forms for `[val]` homophones
a. `<Wal>` 'whale'
b. `<Wahl>` 'choice'
c. `<Waal>` 'River Waal in the Netherlands'
d. `<Vaal>` 'River Vaal in South Africa'

It should be noted that systematic orthography does not always provide a sole fixed spelling of a given word. For instance, the above constraint on the well-formed spelling of `[a]` in German still leaves `<a>` (8a) and `<ah>` (8b) as two possible representations of the segment. Instead of using these forms interchangeably, the German writing system has standardised conventions stipulating which form should be used on a word-to-word basis (e.g., `<a>` for `[val]` 'whale' but not for `[val]` 'choice'). MT distinguishes such conventions from systematic orthography and refers to them as *conventional orthography* (Neef, 2012, p. 13; 2015, p. 716).

It is also important to add that systematic orthography is characterised as an optional module (Neef, 2015, p. 716). There are two logical possibilities for an alphabetic system to fully function without this module. The first one is that its graphematics implements a strict one-to-one correspondence between characters and phonological segments.<fnref n="10" /> The second one is that the writing system allows more than one characters to represent a single segment and yet relies entirely on conventional orthography to determine the correct spellings of individual words. This latter possibility is not explicitly discussed in the MT literature and requires further exploration in the future.

To summarise, MT explains the script-to-language relationship in alphabetic systems by assuming the three modules described in (9a-c).

(9) Three modules of MT
a. Language system provides a linguistic foundation
b. Graphematics associates characters with segments
c. Systematic orthography optionally decides correct spellings

<footnote n="10">10. As an example of this possibility, Neef (2015, pp. 714–715) cites the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as used for transcribing English. While the IPA can be aptly characterised as a phonologically based alphabetic system (e.g., Coulmas, 2003, pp. 28–33), it is a purpose-built 'technography' as opposed to naturally developed 'orthography' (Mountford, 1996, pp. 627–629). It is open to question whether writing systems belonging to such different categories can be compared on the same level.</footnote>
## 2. Japanese Writing System

Using the key concepts of MT outlined above, this section examines their compatibility with the analysis of the current Japanese writing system. After a brief outline of the underlying language system (Section 2.1), a partial analysis of the writing system is developed in the light of the notions of graphematics (Section 2.2) and systematic orthography (Section 2.3).

### 2.1. Language System

Starting with segmental phonology, there has never been a general consensus on how to phonemicise the sounds of modern Japanese. However, assuming the non-derivational linguistic approach of MT, it is possible to make some meaningful generalisations about the sound system at the surface phonological level (based on Vance, 2008, pp. 53–112, 225–232; Labrune, 2012, pp. 25–101, 132–141; Saitō, 2013, pp. 84–96). With regard to vowels, Japanese has five contrastive sounds (10a), each also contrasting with a quantitatively longer counterpart (10b). As for consonants, there are some twenty plain contrastive sounds (10c). Among these, [n] occurs only syllable-finally and is in complementary distribution with [m], [n] and other nasal sounds in that position (e.g., [aṇ], [am.ma], [an.na]). Some consonants have palatalised counterparts (10d), which are not allowed before [e], allophonic before [i], and contrastive before [a o w].<fnref n="11" /> Each voiceless obstruent consonant, except for the nonsibilant [φçh], contrasts with a quantitatively longer counterpart (10e), which occurs only ambisyllabically (e.g., [ap:a] = [ap·̥:pa]).

(10) Japanese sound system

a. [i e a o w]

b. [i: e: a: o: w:]

c. [p b t d k g φ s c ç h ts dż tc dż m n N r j w]

d. [pʰi bʰi kʰi gʰi mʰi nʰi cʰi]

e. [p: pʰ: t: k: kʰ: s: c: ts: tc:]

Moving on to prosodic phonology (based on Vance, 2008, pp. 115–126, 225–232; Labrune, 2012, pp. 142–161; Saitō, 2013, pp. 97–103, 113–116), the above segments are organised into maximally (C₁)V(C₂) syllables (11a-d). The C₂ is either [N] (11c) or an ambisyllabic long consonant occupying the coda position (11d). Japanese is a mora-timed and weight-by-position language (Hayes, 1989, pp. 258–260), wherein a

<footnote n="11">11. While palatalised [tʰi dʰi φʰi] have a somewhat similar distribution, they are contrastive only before [u] in a limited number of loanwords, and are often replaced by [tco dco çco], respectively (e.g., [tʰuul:ba] ~ [tco uul:ba] ‘tuba’).</footnote>
light (C)V syllable (11a) counts as one mora and a heavy (C)V: or (C)VC syllable (11b-d) counts as two morae (e.g., Kubozono, 1999, pp. 48–55). Japanese phonology also has lexical pitch accent, which assigns a steep pitch fall to some words (11e) but not to others (11f).<fnref n="12" />

(11) Japanese syllable structure and lexical pitch accent

a. [ka]

b. [ka:]

c. [kaṇ]

d. [kap(:a)]

e. [ka⊥t:a] ‘win-PAST.AFF’

f. [kat:a] ‘buy-PAST.AFF’

Turning now to morphology and word formation (based on Shibatani, 1990, pp. 215–256; Tsujimura, 2013, pp. 125–157; Nitta et al., 2010, pp. 73–92, 225–232), Japanese morphemes may be free or bound, the latter being prefixes, suffixes or enclitics. These morphemes form both monomorphemic (12a) and polymorphemic words, the latter including compounds (12b), derivatives (12c) and inflected items (12d).

(12) Japanese morphology and word formation

a. [uta] ‘song’

b. [utagoe] ‘song+voice’ (= singing voice)

c. [outa] ‘HON-song’

d. [utat:a] ‘sing-PAST.AFF’

Syntactically (based on Shibatani, 1990, pp. 257–262; Tsujimura, 2013, pp. 229–254), Japanese is characterised as a head-final language. It has basic subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, with postpositional particles marking grammatical relations (13).

(13) Japanese syntax

gakusei ga uta o utat:a

student NOM song ACC sing-PAST.AFF

‘A student sang a song.’

With respect to the lexicon (based on Shibatani, 1990, pp. 140–157; Tsujimura, 2013, pp. 229–254; Kageyama and Saito, 2016, pp. 12–29), Japanese lexical items can be classified into four main groups according to their etymological origins. These are known as Native Japanese (NJ) (14a), Sino-Japanese (SJ) (14b), Mimetic (14c) and Foreign (14d). The fifth group of hybrid is also called for because Japanese words include compounds of morphemes from different sublexicons (14e).

<footnote n="12">12. This paper uses a downward-pointing arrow to indicate the position of a pitch fall (Vance, 2008, p. 143).</footnote>
(14) Japanese lexicon

a. [kotoba↓] 'word'

b. [go] 'word'

c. [wa↓:do] 'word' (< Eng. *word*)

d. [pe↓:rapera] 'fluent, chitchatty'

e. [kensakuwa↓:do] 'search word' (SJ + Foreign)

## 2.2. Graphematics

As noted above, the current Japanese writing system employs a mixture of multiple scripts, namely logographic kanji, moraic hiragana and katakana, and alphabetic rōmaji (Backhouse, 1984, p. 219; Smith, 1996, p. 214; Joyce, 2011, p. 62; Honda, 2012, pp. 38–39).<fnref n="13" /> While it is theoretically possible to write Japanese entirely in one script or another, the current norm is to use them all for different purposes in a complementary manner (15).<fnref n="14" /> Thus, one may speak of a complex system of written signs divided into typologically distinct but functionally interlinked subparts.

(15) Japanese scripts<fnref n="15" />

<table><thead><tr><td>Name</td><td>Characters represent</td><td>Script used to write</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Kanji</td><td>Morphemes(?)</td><td>Lexical items (SJ & NJ)</td></tr><tr><td>Hiragana</td><td>Morae</td><td>Affixes & enclitics (NJ)</td></tr><tr><td>Katakana</td><td>Morae</td><td>Lexical items (Foreign & Mimetic)</td></tr><tr><td>Rōmaji</td><td>Vowels & consonants</td><td>Lexical items (Foreign)</td></tr></tbody></table>

Consequently, Japanese is usually written in a multi-script text (16a), where the characters of different scripts correspond to different properties of linguistic representation (16b).

<footnote n="13">13. Japanese braille (点字 tenji) constitutes a separate tactile writing system, which has different formal and functional features from the multi-script visual writing system under discussion (Unger, 1984, p. 254; Hosokawa, 2001, pp. 652–655).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14. Some might find it impossible to write Japanese solely in the kanji script, assuming that they cannot indicate grammatical information. However, this is a viable option given the historical use of man'yōgana (万葉仏名) or phonographically used kanji characters (e.g., Seeley, 2000, p. 190).</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15. Some notes are in order here. Firstly, the question mark has been added after 'Morphemes' because of uncertainty surrounding the morphemic or morphographic nature of kanji (see below and Section 3). Secondly, hiragana and katakana characters are described as being moraic by some (e.g., Honda, 2012, pp. 72–93) and as core syllabic by others (e.g., Buckley, 2018, pp. 38–42). Thirdly, some scholars use 'arufabetto' (アルファベット) to refer to the Roman script and reserves 'rōmaji' for the Romanised notation of Japanese words (e.g., Satake, 2005, pp. 34–36). Finally, rōmaji (or arufabetto) characters are commonly used for abbreviations of words across sublexicons (ibid., p. 36), in which case they exhibit the characteristics of both phonographs and logographs (Sven Osterkamp and Yannis Haralambous, personal communication).</footnote>
(16) Japanese multi-script text

a. 東京はローマ字で <Tōkyō> だ。

b. to:kɔ: wa ro:mai de to:kɔ: da
Tokyo TOP Rōmaji INS Tokyo COP
'Tokyo is <Tōkyō> in Rōmaji.'

To account for this fact using the MT model, the present paper proposes to introduce the notion of *structured graphematics*. That is, the graphematic module needs to be divided into submodules, which define the associations between characters or character combinations and linguistic properties in the respective scripts. This is illustrated in (17), showing the graphematic rules for each character used in the example (16) above. The rules are tentative ones for kanji (17a), where it is also possible to interpret the characters as being associated with morphemes (e.g., <東> → {to:} ∨ {higaçi}; Section 3).

(17) Japanese graphematics<fnref n="16" />

a. i. <東> → [to:] ∨ [higaçi]

ii. <京> → [kɔ:] ∨ [ke:]

iii. <字> → [dz̩i] ∨ [adza]

b. i. <は> → [ha] ∨ [wa]

ii. <で> → [de]

iii. <だ> → [da]

c. i. <口> → [ro]

ii. <→> → [:]

iii. <マ> → [ma]

d. i. <t> → [t]

ii. <ō> → [o:]

iii. <k> → [k]

iv. <y> → [j]

Structured graphematics sufficiently captures both the integrity of
the four scripts and their functional division in the Japanese writing

<footnote n="16">16. Many-to-one associations between characters and their linguistic properties are prevalent in the kanji submodule, creating a significant amount of ambiguity in character decoding (Honda, 2012, pp. 156–160). Neef and Balestra (2011, pp. 113–129) use the term *graphematic transparency* to refer to a similar kind of ambiguity in alphabetic systems and propose a way to measure it in German and Italian. Whether their measurement framework is adaptable to Japanese and other non-alphabetic systems remains a topic for future research.</footnote>
system.<fnref n="17" /> Importantly, the kind of correspondence rules assumed for alphabetic systems can also be used for the non-alphabetic kanji, hiragana and katakana (17a-c) as well as the alphabetic rōmaji (17d). Based on this observation, the present paper suggests that assuming the graphematic module is meaningful for the analysis of typologically different writing systems.

## 2.3. Systematic Orthography

As observed in the German examples discussed above (Section 1.3), the presence of multiple characters representing the same phonological segment generates a graphematic solution space for words containing that segment. According to MT, systematic orthography filters all theoretically possible spellings of a given word and determines the well-formed spelling. If this still leaves more than one spellings, conventional orthography decides the correct one on a word-to-word basis.

Similar examples of many-to-one correspondence can be found in the graphematic module of the current Japanese writing system. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is possible to speak of a graphematic solution space with respect to the non-alphabetic submodules (18a-c) as well as the alphabetic one (18d). Thus, regardless of the type of writing system, having multiple ways to represent the same linguistic property necessarily entails multiple ways to write words containing that property.

(18) Japanese graphematic solution space and orthographic forms<fnref n="18" />

a. i. <見> ∨ <観> → [mi]

ii. <見た> [mi↓ta] 'see-PAST.AFF'

iii. <観た> [mi↓ta] 'see-PAST.AFF'

b. i. <お> ∨ <を> → [o]

ii. <かお> [kao] 'face'

iii. <かを> [kao] 'mosquito ACC'

c. i. <→> ∨ <工> → [:] immediately after (C)e

<footnote n="17">17. The same notion may also be used to account for other writing systems. Although the mixed use of multiple scripts is a distinctive characteristic of Japanese, variants of multi-script writing are also found in many writing systems of the world. For example, English employs not only the Roman script but also sets of logographs, ciphers and punctuation marks (see the examples in (2a-d) above). While it is possible to characterise the former as the script of primary importance and the latter of secondary importance, further discussion is needed to establish criteria for such a distinction.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18. In each set of examples presented here, the first line shows two characters or character combinations (separated by the disjunction symbol) that correspond to a single phonological form. The second line presents an example written word containing the more frequent representation of the form in question. The third line gives another example with a less frequent representation.</footnote>
ii. <パレー> [ba↓re:] 'volleyball'

iii. <パレエ> [ba↓re:] 'ballet'

d. i. <ī> ∨ <ii> → [i:]

ii. <Īda> [i↓:da] 'Polish personal name'

iii. <Iida> [i↓:da] 'Japanese city name'

Crucially, however, it is difficult to find evidence for a systematic orthography in the Japanese writing system. To illustrate with the kanji examples above, there is no reason to believe that the items in (18a.ii) and (18a.iii) are separate words belonging to different layers of the Japanese vocabulary. In other words, the choice between the two kanji characters is only explicable in terms of conventional rather than systematic orthography. Regarding the hiragana examples in (18b.ii) and (18b.iii), it is conventional to use <お> for [o] in any word and <を> for the accusative particle with the same phonological form.<fnref n="19" /> The katakana examples in (18c.ii) and (18c.iii) show the default use of <一> for representing [:] and the exceptional word-specific use of <エ> for vowel length in the second syllable.<fnref n="20" /> The Rōmaji examples in (18d.ii) and (18d.iii) show proper nouns written in the common Hebonshiki romanisation system; whereas the first character in the former can go with or without the macron (i.e., either <Īda> or <Ida>), the double-character spelling in the latter seems to be the norm for writing the city name (i.e., <Iida> but neither *<Īda> nor *<Ida>).<fnref n="21" />

Nevertheless, it may still be possible to argue for the presence of a systematic orthography in Japanese. It will be recalled that there is a functional division between the four scripts employed in the writing system. This is loosely defined by a set of orthographic guidelines promulgated by the Japanese Cabinet, and is implemented more or less systematically in administration, education and publication. At the same

<footnote n="19">19. While the current norm is to write the former in kanji 願 and the latter in kanji and hiragana 蚊, it is possible to write them entirely in hiragana as shown here (see Section 2.2 above and the discussion below for the fungible use of scripts in Japanese). Historically, <お> and <を> were used to represent [o] and [wo], respectively. After the loss of syllable-initial [w] before [o i e] in around 1000 CE (Frellesvig, 2010, pp. 206–207), both characters correspond to [o]. The conventional use of <を> for the accusative particle was codified in the first official guidelines for hiragana orthography promulgated by the Japanese Cabinet in 1946 (現代かなづかい Gendai Kanazukai 'Modern Kana Usage'). The same convention is stipulated by the current version updated in 1986 (現代仮名遣い Gendai Kanazukai 'Modern Kana Usage').</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20. The same syllable is usually written as <レー> as exemplified by <レーザー> [re↓:dza:] 'laser' and <ジレー> [dzi↓re:] 'gilet'. Nothing suggests a systematically differentiated representation of [e:] in loanwords based on the source language (e.g., English versus French).</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21. The English version of the official website of Iida City in Nagano Prefecture consistently uses this spelling (https://www.city.iida.lg.jp/).</footnote>
time, it is also a common practice to use different scripts interchange-
ably to write the same lexical item for various purposes (Joyce and Ma-
suda, 2019, pp. 255–274). Taking these facts together, one may speak of
a variant of systematic orthography that permits, rather than prohibits,
the fungible use of scripts in this writing system. Further research is
needed to elaborate on the systematicity and flexibility of orthographic
conventions in Japanese and other writing systems.

3. Logography and Logographic Systems

While MT says very little about non-alphabetic systems, it makes the
following remark concerning logography and logographic systems:

Logographic writing systems differ from phonographic writing systems
in that their basic units are logograms, [...], i.e., functional classes that corre-
spond to words or morphemes. (Neef, 2015, p. 713).

As previously mentioned, this statement reflects the traditional clas-
sification of writing systems into two broad types according to the pri-
mary type of written signs (Section 1.2). In the literature, however,
there is an ongoing debate over the validity of this dichotomous divi-
sion. Some studies view all writing systems as being primarily phono-
graphic, even if they may also employ a smaller or larger number of
logographs (e.g., DeFrancis, 1989, pp. 56–64). Some others agree on
the primary importance of phonographs but maintain that logographs
also play an important role in virtually all writing systems (e.g., Sproat,
2000, pp. 139–143). Yet another group of studies reject the primacy
of phonography and classify all writing systems into the phonographic
type and the *morphographic* type (e.g., Joyce, 2011, pp. 63–72).<fnref n="22" /> With
respect to MT, the disagreement over the dichotomy between phono-
graphic and logographic systems calls into question the position of lo-
gography in its theoretical framework.

To address the above question, it would be meaningful to take a closer
look at the graphematic aspects of Japanese kanji, which are widely re-
garded as the prime example of logography (e.g., Sampson, 2015, p. 208;
Sproat, 2000, p. 154). One notable feature of this submodule is that
characters and character combinations correspond to meaning-carrying
phonological forms in many words. For instance, <愛> represents [aidei],

<footnote n="22">22. Whereas ‘logographic / logography’ implies the use of mono- and polymorphic word signs, ‘morphographic / morphography’ suggests that the writing system in question primarily employs the signs of free and bound morphemes (Joyce, 2011, pp. 69–70). This latter term is becoming increasingly accepted as an alternative to the more traditional ‘morphemic’ label (Rogers, 2005, pp. 14–15; cf. Hill, 1967, p. 93).</footnote>
which can form a morphologically simplex word (19a) or an element of complex words (19b,c). A comparison of these and other related words reveals that this phonological form is associated with the meaning ‘love’. Because the sound-meaning unit is not analysable into smaller parts, it can be regarded as a morpheme or the minimal meaningful unit in a language. Through a similar analysis, one can say that kanji characters represent morphemes in a large number of kanji-written words (Joyce, 2011, p. 71). This observation appears to support the notion that logo-graphic systems are essentially morphemic and hence ‘morphographic’ in nature (Section 1.2).

(19) Morphographic kanji

a. <愛> [a↓i] ‘love’

b. <愛情> [aidzo:] ‘love+emotion’ (= affection)

c. <恋愛> [renai] ‘yearning+love’ (= romance)

However, it is also important to note that kanji characters do not always represent morphemes. For one thing, they may correspond to phonological forms carrying no discernible meaning. For example, <陸> is only used in the word shown in (20a), where it corresponds to [he:].<sup>23</sup> Although this phonological form historically denoted ‘a flight of steps in a palace’, such a meaning is synchronically unidentifiable because the character’s idiosyncratic usage makes a comparative analysis impossi-ble. A similar description holds for <祉> (20b) as well as for <挨> and <拶> (20c).<sup>24</sup> It is difficult, if not at all impossible, to say that these

<footnote n="23">23. The largest Japanese dictionary *Nihon Kokugo Daijiten* (Kitahara et al., 2000) includes two more headwords containing this character, namely <陸戟> [he:geki] ‘imperial guard’ and <楓陸> [φω:he:] ‘flight of steps in a palace’. However, they are extremely infrequent in contemporary Japanese, and no instance of either item is found in the 100-million word Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ: https://pj.ninjal.ac.jp/corpus_center/bccwj/en/).</footnote>

<footnote n="24">24. A related example can be found in <葡萄> [budo:] ‘grape’. Historically, the two constituent characters were invented for the specific purpose of writing the di-syllabic monomorphemic word in Chinese. Kanji-written words of this kind can be found in both Chinese and Japanese. A notable feature of these items is the pres-ence of a shared semantic component or ‘radical’ in both constituent characters (e.g., the three-stroke ‘grass’ component in <荀> and <荀>), presumably denoting mor-phological and semantic unity of the word in question (Sproat, 2000, pp. 148–154). Cornelia Schindelin has suggested the term *radical harmony* for this device, in analogy to ‘vowel harmony’ in phonology (personal communication). In graphematic terms, there are two possible interpretations of radical harmony. The first interpretation is that the constituent characters function as word-specific syllabographs correspond-ing respectively to the first and second syllables (e.g., <荀> → [bū] + <荀> → [do:] when used for {BUDŌ}; Honda, 2019, p. 202). The second possibility is that they form a digraphic morphograph representing the morpheme in a holistic fashion (e.g., <荀 荀> → {BUDŌ}; Zev Handel and Gordian Schreiber, personal communication). Fur-ther discussion is needed to elaborate on this issue.</footnote>
characters represent morphemes as minimal meaningful units (Honda, 2019, p. 197).

(20) Non-morphographic kanji

a. <陛下> [he↓:ka] ‘Majesty’

b. <福祉> [φωκω↓ci] ‘welfare’

c. <挨拶> [a↓isatsu] ‘greeting’

For another thing, kanji characters may be used phonographically to write certain words, even if they represent individual morphemes elsewhere. This rebus-like use, known traditionally as *ateji* (当て字), is found in many orthographic kanji-written words (21a). The same method is also widely used to produce non-orthographic alternatives to orthographically written words for a more playful stylistic effect (21b).<fnref n="25" /> In both cases, individual characters correspond to different portions of the word’s phonological form, with little or no regard to their associated meanings. When kanji characters are used this way, there is no reason to assume that they represent individual morphemes (Joyce, 2011, p. 71).

(21) Orthographic and non-orthographic ateji<fnref n="26" />

a. i. <出> → [de(↓ru)] ‘go out’

ii. <鱒> → [ta↓ra] ‘cod’

iii. <目> → [me↓] ‘eye’

iv. <出鱒目> [detarame] ‘hogwash’

b. i. <羅> → [ra] ‘silk gauze’

ii. <武> → [buu] ‘military affairs’

iii. <羅武> [ra↓buu] ‘love’ (conventionally, katakana <ラブ>)

It should also be added that it is not always clear whether individual kanji characters correspond to morphemes in words with an apparently complex morphological structure (Vance, 2002, p. 187; Honda, 2019, pp. 195–197). To give an example, <勉強> [benkjo:] ‘study’ is etymologically a compound of <勉> [ben] ‘strive, serve, fill a post, etc.’ and <強> [kjo:] ‘strength, might, strong person, etc.’.<fnref n="27" /> From a strictly synchronic standpoint, however, there is little evidence indicating whether or not

<footnote n="25">25. Phonographic use of logographs, as well as logographic use of phonographs, is widely attested across writing systems; see descriptions of individual systems in Daniels and Bright (1996) and Kōno, Chino, and Nishida (2001). This point calls into question the validity of the traditional dichotomy between phonography and logography or morphography (Osterkamp and Schreiber, 2021; cf. Handel, 2020).</footnote>

<footnote n="26">26. The characters <出> (21a.i), <目> (21a.iii) and <武> (21b.ii) are also associated with other sound-meaning units, which are omitted here for clarity.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">27. In this word, the uvular nasal [ṇ] is phonetically realised as the velar nasal [ŋ] due to anticipatory assimilation of place of articulation. This detail is omitted in the surface phonological transcription adopted in this paper.</footnote>
the same word retains such compositionality in present-day Japanese. The same can be said for many kanji-written words, both common and uncommon. This observation allows three possible interpretations for the constituent characters in such items: separate morphographs (22a), one polygraphic morphograph (22b) or separate syllabographs with lexically conditioned distributions (22c).

(22) Possible interpretations of <勉強>

a. <勉> → {beN} + <強> → {kito;}

b. <勉強> → {beNkito;}

c. <勉> → [beN] + <強> → [kito:] when used for {beNkito;}

The plausibility of the first interpretation depends on specific assumptions about morphological structure and morphemehood (Joyce, 2011, pp. 69–73). The second interpretation requires a theory of what count as polygraphs in different types of writing systems, which is still at an early stage of development (Osterkamp and Schreiber, 2019).<fnref n="28" /> The third one implies that each constituent character represents the phonological exponent of the whole or a portion of a morpheme, a claim that needs further examination (Honda, 2019, pp. 202–203).

With respect to MT, the above observations raise several questions about its treatment of logography and logographic systems (23).

(23) Questions about logography and logographic systems

a. How should MT conceptualise logography in relation to morphography and phonography? Are they mutually exclusive concepts, or do they have commonalities as well as differences?

b. Is it appropriate for MT to assume the traditional dichotomy between phonographic and logographic (or morphographic) systems as fundamentally different types of writing systems?

c. Does MT need to make reference to morphology as well as phonology to account for the script-to-language relationship in logographic (or morphographic) systems?

d. If reference to morphology is necessary, what theories of morphological structure and morphemehood would be compatible with the general framework of MT?

<footnote n="28">28. The term ‘polygraph’ is usually reserved for the multi-character representation of a single segment or syllable in phonographic systems (e.g., Sproat, 2000, 140, fn. 2). The Japanese writing system employs a considerable number of *jukuji* (熟字) or monomorphemic kanji character combinations, giving rise to the hitherto underexplored notion of ‘polygraphic morphographs’ or ‘morphographic polygraphs’ (Honda, 2012, pp. 120–123; Osterkamp and Schreiber, 2019).</footnote>
## 4. Conclusion

This paper has explored the adaptability of MT to the analysis of non-alphabetic systems through a discussion of the current Japanese writing system. Using the key concepts of MT, a partial analysis of kanji, hiragana, katakana and rōmaji has been presented to highlight the possibilities and challenges of this theory. A summary of the discussion is given below (24).

(24) Summary and remaining issues

a. Current MT is essentially a theory of alphabetic systems. However, with its non-derivational linguistic approach, MT has the potential for expanding into a general theory of script-to-language relationship across different types of writing systems.

b. In principle, the theory's three-module model is adaptable to the analysis of the Japanese writing system. This suggests that the key concepts of MT are applicable to non-alphabetic systems.

c. However, some of the basic assumptions about graphematics and systematic orthography require modification in this context:

i. The notion of structured graphematics should be introduced to account for the functional division between kanji, hiragana, katakana and rōmaji.

ii. Further research is needed to elaborate on the systematicity and flexibility of orthographic conventions in view of the choice of characters and the fungible use of scripts in Japanese.

d. Observations on the graphematic aspects of kanji characters call for further discussion of issues related to logography and logographic systems.

In conclusion, a MT approach to the Japanese writing system provides a new perspective on the capability of this theory to account for the script-to-language relationship in different types of writing systems. Further research is called for to elaborate and examine the generality of MT.

## Acknowledgements

I wish to express my deepest gratitude and respect to Yannis Haralambous and his colleagues for organising and delivering the *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020* conference in the challenging time of COVID-19 pandemic. My sincere gratitude also goes to the programme committee and anonymous reviewers for giving me the opportunity to present an earlier version of this study. Special thanks are due to the participants to the conference, too, for their insightful questions, comments and suggestions. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Martin Neef for his constructive feedback on the present attempt to investigate the adaptability of his Modular Theory of Writing Systems.
References

Backhouse, Anthony E. (1984). "Aspects of the graphological structure of Japanese." In: *Visible Language* 18.3, pp. 219-228.

Bloomfield, Leonard (1933). *Language*. London: George Allen and Unwin.

Buckley, Eugene (2018). "Core syllables vs. moraic writing." In: *Written Language and Literacy* 21.1, pp. 26-51.

Chomsky, Carol (1970). "Reading, writing, and phonology." In: *Harvard Educational Review* 40.2, pp. 287-309.

Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle (1968). *The sound pattern of English*. New York: Harper and Row New York.

Coulmas, Florian (2003). *Writing systems: An introduction to their linguistic analysis*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Daniels, Peter T. (1996). "The study of writing systems." In: *The world's writing systems*. Ed. by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. New York: Oxford University Press New York, pp. 3-17.

——— (2018). *An exploration of writing*. Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox Publishing Limited.

Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright (1996). *The world's writing systems*. New York: Oxford University Press.

DeFrancis, John (1989). *Visible speech: The diverse oneness of writing systems*. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Douglas, Aileen (2017). *Work in band: Script, print, and writing, 1690-1840*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Faber, Alice (1992). "Phonemic segmentation as epiphenomenon: Evidence from the history of alphabetic writing." In: *The Linguistics of Literacy* 21, pp. 111-134.

Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010). *A history of the Japanese language*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gelb, Ignace J. (1963). *A study of writing*. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Gnanadesikan, Amalia E. (2017). "Towards a typology of phonemic scripts." In: *Writing Systems Research* 9.1, pp. 14-35.

Haas, William (1983). "Determining the level of a script." In: *Writing in focus*. Ed. by Florian Coulmas and Konrad Ehlich. Berlin: Mouton, pp. 15-29.

Handel, Zev (July 18, 2020). *Is Logographic a Valid Script Category? Evidence from Historical Borrowing of the Chinese-Character Script*. Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century-From Graphemes to Knowledge. URL: https://youtu.be/Z1Usj8JqruA (visited on 12/16/2020).

Haralambous, Yannis (2020). "Grapholinguistics, T<sub>EX</sub>, and a June 2020 conference." In: *TUGboat* 41.1, pp. 12-19.

Harris, Roy (1995). *Signs of writing*. London: Routledge.

Hayes, Bruce (1989). "Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology." In: *Linguistic Inquiry* 20.2, pp. 253-306.
Hill, Archibald A. (1967). "The typology of writing systems." In: *Papers in linguistics in honor of Leon Dostert*. Ed. by William M. Austen. The Hague and Paris: Mouton The Hague, pp. 92-99.

Honda, Keisuke (2012). "The relation of orthographic units to linguistic units in the Japanese writing system: An analysis of kanji, kana and kanji-okurigana writing." PhD thesis. University of Tsukuba.

——— (2019). "What do kanji graphs represent in the current Japanese writing system? Towards a unified model of kanji as written signs." In: *Proceedings of Graphemics in the 21st Century, Brest 2018*. Ed. by Yannis Haralambous. Brest: Fluxus Editions, pp. 185-208.

Hosokawa, Yukiko [細川由起子] (2001). "点字 [Braille]." In: 言語学大辞典別巻世界文字辞典 [The Sanseidō encyclopaedia of linguistics, Vol. 7: Scripts and writing systems of the world]. Ed. by Rokurō Kōno [河野六郎], Eiichi Chino [千野栄一], and Tatsuo Nishida [西田龍雄]. 東京 [Tokyo]: 三省堂 [Sanseido Press], pp. 641-655.

Joyce, Terry (2011). "The significance of the morphographic principle for the classification of writing systems." In: *Written Language and Literacy* 14.1, pp. 58-81.

——— (2016). "Writing systems and scripts." In: *Verbal communication*. Ed. by Andrea Rocci and Louis De Saussure. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 287-308.

Joyce, Terry and Susanne R. Borgwaldt (2011). "Typology of writing systems: Special issue introduction." In: *Written Language and Literacy* 14.1, pp. 1-11.

Joyce, Terry and Hisashi Masuda (2019). "On the notions of graphematic representation and orthography from the perspective of the Japanese writing system." In: *Written Language and Literacy* 22.2, pp. 247-279.

Justeson, John S (1976). "Universals of language and universals of writing." In: *Linguistic studies offered to Joseph Greenberg on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday*. Ed. by Alphonse Juilland. Saratoga: Anma Libri, pp. 57-94.

Kageyama, Taro and Michiaki Saito (2016). "Vocabulary strata and word formation processes." In: *Handbook of Japanese lexicon and word formation*. Ed. by Taro Kageyama and Hideki Kishimoto. Boston and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Inc., pp. 11-50.

Kitahara, Yasuo [北原保雄] et al., eds. (2000). 日本国語大辞典 [Great dictionary of the Japanese language]. 2nd ed. 東京 [Tokyo]: 小学館 [Shōgakukan].

Kōno, Rokurō [河野六郎], Eiichi Chino [千野栄一], and Tatsuo Nishida [西田龍雄] (2001). 言語学大辞典別巻世界文字辞典 [The Sanseidō encyclopaedia of linguistics, Volume 7: Scripts and writing systems of the world]. 東京 [Tokyo]: 三省堂 [Sanseidō].

Kubozono, Haruo (1999). "Mora and syllable." In: *The handbook of Japanese linguistics*. Ed. by Natsuko Tsujimura. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 31-61.
Labrune, Laurence (2012). *The phonology of Japanese*. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Meletis, Dimitrios (2019). "The grapheme as a universal basic unit of writing." In: *Writing Systems Research* 11.1, pp. 26–49.

Mountford, John (1996). "A functional classification." In: *The world's writing systems*. Ed. by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 627–632.

Neef, Martin (2012). "Graphematics as part of a modular theory of phonographic writing systems." In: *Writing Systems Research* 4.2, pp. 214–228.

——— (2015). "Writing systems as modular objects: Proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics." In: *Open Linguistics* 1, pp. 708–721.

Neef, Martin and Miriam Balestra (2011). "Measuring graphematic transparency: German and Italian compared." In: *Written Language and Literacy* 14.1, pp. 109–142.

Nitta, Yoshio [仁田義雄] et al. (2010). 現代日本語文法 [Modern Japanese grammar]. 東京 [Tokyo]: くろしお出版 [Kurosio Shuppan].

Osterkamp, Sven and Gordian Schreiber (Mar. 26, 2019). *<Th>e ubi<qu>ity of polygra<ph>y and its significance for <th>e typology of <wr>iti<ng> systems*. The 12th International Workshop of the Association for Written Language and Literacy. URL: http://faculty-sgs.tama.ac.jp/terry/awll/wsMaterials/AWLL12-2019-ProgrammeAbstracts.pdf (visited on 12/16/2020).

——— (2021). "Challenging the Dichotomy Between Phonography and Morphography: Transitions and Gray Areas." this volume.

Pettersson, John Sören (1996). "Numerical notation." In: *The world's writing systems*. Ed. by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 795–806.

Ratcliffe, Robert R. (2001). "What do 'phonemic' writing systems represent?: Arabic huruuf, Japanese kana, and the moraic principle." In: *Written Language and Literacy* 4.1, pp. 1–14.

Rogers, Henry (2005). *Writing systems: A linguistic approach*. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

Saitō, Yoshio [斎藤純男] (2013). 日本語音声学入門 [Introduction to Japanese phonetics]. 東京 [Tokyo]: 三省堂 [Sanseidō].

Sampson, Geoffrey (2015). *Writing systems*. Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox Publishing Ltd.

Sasahara, Hiroyuki [倉原宏之] (2001). "日本の文字 [Japanese scripts]." In: 言語学大辞典別巻世界文字辞典 [*The Sanseidō encyclopaedia of linguistics, Volume 7: Scripts and writing systems of the world*]. Ed. by Rokurō Kōno [河野六郎], Eiichi Chino [千野栄一], and Tatsuo Nishida [西田龍雄]. 東京 [Tokyo]: 三省堂 [Sanseido Press], pp. 696–706.

Satake, Hideo [佐竹秀雄] (2005). "現代日本語の文字と書記法 [Scripts and writing in modern Japanese]." In: 文字・書記 [*Scripts and writing*]. Ed. by
Hayashi Chikafumi [林史典]. 東京 [Tokyo]: 朝倉書店 [Asakura Shoten], pp. 22–50.

Saussure, Ferdinand de (1983/1916). *Course in general linguistics*. Trans. by Roy Harris. London: Duckworth.

Seeley, Christopher (2000). *A history of writing in Japan*. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). *The languages of Japan*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, Janet S. (Shibamoto) (1996). *Japanese writing*. Ed. by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 209–217.

Sproat, Richard (2000). *A computational theory of writing systems*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, Insup and M. Martin Taylor (2014). *Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese*. Rev. ed. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Tsujimura, Natsuko (2013). *An introduction to Japanese linguistics*. Malden and Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.

Unger, J. Marshall (1984). “Japanese braille.” In: *Visible Language* 18.3, pp. 254–256.

Vachek, Josef (1973). *Written language: General problems and problems of English*. The Hague: Mouton.

Vance, Timothy J. (2002). “The exception that proves the rule: Ideography and Japanese kun'yomi.” In: *Difficult characters: Interdisciplinary studies of Chinese and Japanese writing*. Ed. by Mary S. Erbaugh. Columbus: National East Asian Language Resource Center, Ohio State University, pp. 177–193.

——— (2008). *The sounds of Japanese*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
<figure><img src="image_10.png" /></figure>
# Levels of Structure
Within Chinese Character Constituents

James Myers

*Abstract.* It is already known that Chinese readers and writers decompose characters into four structural levels: basic components, complex strokes, simple strokes, and stroke features. These levels parallel word-internal structure in spoken and signed languages (respectively, morphemes, complex segments, segments, and segmental features). In this paper I consider evidence for a level intermediate between basic components and strokes: the stroke group. Like syllables, stroke groups are targeted by stress-like prominence and analyzable in terms of analogs to onsets, nuclei, and codas. They also seem to compete with each other for space within a component, as syllables do within morphemes. Though the analogies between stroke groups and syllables are weaker than the linguistic analogies for other character levels, the stroke group concept may help improve our understanding of a hitherto understudied aspect of writing systems: stroke interactions.

## 1. Introduction

Myers (2019) is a sober defense of an outrageous idea, the idea that Chinese characters conform to a genuine lexical grammar. In it I argue that Chinese script has direct analogs to morphemes, affixation, compounding, reduplication, inflectional agreement, idiosyncratic allomorphy, regular allomorphy, prosodic structure, stress, stress clash, weight, distinctive features, and feature spreading. The arguments are backed up with evidence from quantitative corpus analyses and psycholinguistic experiments, and in general I tried to be cautious in advancing only those claims that seemed reasonably well-established empirically.

In this paper I take a somewhat more, shall we say, speculative approach. Namely, while in the book I mused on whether certain types of stroke groups in Chinese characters are analogous to syllables, I did not
push the idea. The primary purpose of this paper is to see how far this idea can go anyway.

Before we begin, I should say that, like Myers (2019), this paper focuses on traditional characters, but I do occasionally allude to simplified characters, which have almost exactly the same grammar. I also focus only on structures and patterns in modern characters that are hypothesized to be mentally active in contemporary readers and writers; despite its importance to other aspects of character analysis, etymology is thus irrelevant here.

Chinese characters have long been recognized as having multiple levels of representation. For example, the character in (1a) consists of the complex constituents in (1b-c), synchronically interpretable in terms of meaning and/or pronunciation. The constituent in (1c), in turn, consists of the basic components in (1d-e), where that in (1e) is not synchronically interpretable, but appears in other characters like those in (1f). The component in (1e) can be further decomposed into the strokes in (1g), including simple strokes, like the vertical stroke that forms its left edge, and complex strokes, like the rotated-L shape that forms the upper right corners of its two boxlike substructures.

(1) a. 館 guǎn 'public building'

b. 食 shí 'meal'

c. 官 guān 'government official'

d. 爵 mián (roof-related semantic marker)

e. 呂 (synchronically lacking meaning and pronunciation)

f. 師 shī 'army' 遣 qiǎn 'dispatch'

g. フーフー

As will be reviewed in section 2, all of these levels have been demonstrated to be mentally active in the minds of modern readers and to have relatively self-evident analogs to levels in the internal structure of spoken and signed words.

Section 3 then explores the proposed level of stroke groups, which lies between the levels of components and strokes, and points out several similarities they share with syllables. For example, the component in (1e) above contains two boxes, each composed of more than one stroke, and joined together rather than being separate components. Since the lower box in (1e) is larger than the upper one, it is being treated as a whole by some sort of enlargement process. This process is argued in Myers (ibid.) to be like stress, making the targeted stroke group analogous to a stressed syllable. The fact that the box is treated as a whole is also consistent with how its strokes interact (i.e., are arranged with respect to each other), and to a large extent, interactions within stroke groups prove to be analyzable in terms of analogs to syllable-internal structure like onsets, nuclei, and codas. Moreover, stroke groups seem
to compete with each for space within components, much as syllables
do within morphemes.

Section 4 ends the paper with some conclusions.

2. Levels of Structure in Chinese Characters

In spoken and signed languages, morphological and phonological struc-
tures each consist of hierarchical levels, though the two types of hier-
archies themselves parallel each other. For example, in the American
English pronunciation of the word in Figure 1, the division between
morphemes does not correspond precisely to that between syllables (σ),
because the /t/ is ambisyllabic between the strong (stressed) and weak
(unstressed) syllables, as defined by the metrical foot [SW]F (the moras
reflect segmental duration and syllable weight; see, e.g., Hayes, 1989).
This prosodic structure also causes the /t/, lexically specified with the
feature [-voiced], to be realized as [+voiced] [r].

<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. Autosegmental analysis of an American English word</figcaption></figure>

The goal of this section is to review evidence that Chinese characters
also have a hierarchical structure. Even ancient Chinese linguists recog-
nized that characters are composed of interpretable components, which
in turn are built using a small inventory of strokes, but as shown in sec-
tions 2.1 and 2.2, these levels have more recently also been thought of
as corresponding to morphemes and segments, respectively. In 2.3 I re-
view arguments from Myers (2019) suggesting that both of these levels
also interact with something like the metrical structure of spoken and
signed phonology.
## 2.1. Components

The best-studied level of Chinese character structure is the component. The most transparent of these is the semantic radical, which prototypically relates to the meaning of the whole character, as illustrated in (2a). Characters also often have a so-called phonetic component, which hints at the character's pronunciation, though most of these are also complex constituents containing more than one component, as illustrated in (2b).

(2) a. 婚 būn 'marry' 女 nǚ 'female'
b. 昏 būn 'dusk' 氏 shì (a surname) 日 rì 'sun'

All characters can ultimately be decomposed into basic components, forming an inventory much smaller than that of characters. As estimated by Hue (2003), educated traditional character readers know over 5,000 characters, and Unicode contains many tens of thousands, but estimates for the number of basic components in traditional characters ranges only from around 250 to around 650 (see Myers, 2019, Section 1.2.2.3). The component inventory cannot be definitively fixed in part because the character inventory is not fixed, and in part because not all components are interpretable (see, e.g., Slaměníková, 2018). For example, the character in (3a) clearly contains the (uninterpreted) component in (3b), but the rest of the character is not found anywhere else in the traditional character system; the character in (3c) is the simplified equivalent of (3a). Chuang and Teng (2009) treat (3a) as an atomic component, whereas Lu, Chan, Li, and Li (2002), who also cover simplified characters, treat the bottom portion as a component in its own right; Wikimedia Commons<fnref n="1" /> instead decomposes it into the components in (3d). For consistency in this paper, I will pretend that the inventory of 441 traditional character components proposed by Chuang and Teng (2009) is definitive.

(3) a. 單 dān 'single'
b. 口 kǒu 'mouth'
c. 单 dān 'single' (simplified system)
d. 甲 jiǎ 'shell' — yī 'one'

Like morphemes, character components are the minimal potentially interpretable units, even if, like morphemes, not all are actually interpretable synchronically, as in English *result*, *resist*, *consult*, *consist* (see Aronoff, 1994 for the notion of “morphology by itself”). Also like genuine morphology, character decomposition is often recursive, as illustrated above in (2). Such parallels have often been noted (Ladd, 2014;

<footnote n="1">1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:ChineseCharacters_decomposition.</footnote>
Feldman and Siok, 1999), but Myers (2019) takes them further, noting, among other things, that the formal and functional properties of semantic radicals have much in common with those of inflectional affixes, and that component reduplication, as in the top of (3a), shares formal and functional properties with its namesake in spoken and signed morphology (see also Behr, 2006).

There is copious evidence that readers and writers mentally activate character components (see Myers, 2019, Chapter 5, for a thorough review). Taft and Zhu (1997), for example, found that characters were recognized more quickly if they contained higher-frequency components, even if they were unrelated in meaning and pronunciation to the character as a whole; Chen and Cherng (2013) drew related conclusions from handwriting experiments. Such observations are consistent with corpus modeling. For example, Li and Zhou (2007) showed that characters share components to the precise degree that one would expect if characters were generated from components via a general grammar rather than via exemplar-driven analogy (see also Fujiwara, Suzuki, and Morioka, 2004; Haralambous, 2013).

One particular sort of corpus-based generalization will prove particularly relevant to the present study, since it was first observed in syllables and other phonological units: Menzerath's law (Menzerath, 1954), also called the Menzerath-Altmann law (Altmann, 1980). Informally, this law states that the more constituents within a constituent at the next-higher level (e.g., syllables within a morpheme), the simpler they tend to be. In other words, the lower-level units compete for space within the higher-level unit.

This law applies to character components as well. As shown for Japanese Kanji by Prün (1994), and for simplified Chinese characters by Bohn (1998), the more components a character has, the fewer their mean number of strokes; independently, Chen and Liu (2019) showed that this generalization also holds for components in a multi-character word (probably, I speculate, because longer Chinese words tend to be transliterations of foreign borrowings, which tend to reuse the same small set of relatively simple characters).

Formally, Menzerath's law is an inverse power law, as in the simplified version in (4) given in Prün (1994, p. 149), whereby the mean size or complexity *y* of the lower-level constituents is correlated (inversely, given the negative *b*) with the complexity of the upper-level constituent *x* (in terms of the number of lower-level constituents), nonlinearly, so that the difference in constituent size for one versus two constituents is larger than that between two versus three, and so on.

$$ (4) \quad y = ax^b, \quad b < 0 $$

As Prün (ibid.), Bohn (1998), Chen and Liu (2019) have all noted, the fact that the law applies to character components suggests that they rep-
resent a genuine level of description. It thus provides a tool for testing
for the potential psychological reality of character levels even without
running a psycholinguistic experiment.

2.2. Strokes

All writing is composed of strokes, that is, marks left via continuous con-
tact between writing instrument and writing surface. Modern Chinese
script has a set of basic linear strokes that can be used in their basic
forms, concatenated with each other (i.e., changing stroke axis without
lifting the writing instrument), and/or slightly modified (via curving
and/or hooking), as shown in (5) (strokes that fit more than one cate-
gory are repeated).

(5) a. Simple strokes: 丿丼ノノ丿丼一丼丿丼丼丼

b. Complex strokes: フレスルkuèフフレスルèフフるるフるフる

c. Curving: ノノ)しノフフ3

d. Hooking: ノ)しノフフるるフるフる

As has often been observed (Wang, 1983; Peng, 2017; Myers, 2019),
strokes are like phonological segments in being basic units that are read-
ily analyzable in terms of distinctive features, as opposed to the multi-
stroke morpheme-like components that they compose. Watt (1980) ob-
served a similar three-level contrast (morpheme = letter, stroke, feature)
in the Roman alphabet.

No matter how Chinese stroke features are formalized, they serve
to encode axis (horizontal, vertical, main diagonal [\], counterdiago-
nal [/]), curving, and hooking. Though strokes are visual marks, they
also require encoding in terms of motoric gestures, much as evidence
for character components comes from both perceptual and production
experiments (see Myers, 2019, Sections 1.3.1.4 and 5.2.1.2, for more on
amodality as a sign of the grammar-like nature of the Chinese character
system). Individual stroke direction is mostly from left and/or top to
right and/or bottom (for reasons that will be discussed in a later sec-
tion). This gives the so-called dot, the simplest of all strokes, its de-
fault direction along the main (falling) diagonal (see first stroke in (5a)
above). Since the counterdiagonal axis cannot be drawn simultaneously
left to right and top to bottom, the Chinese stroke inventory offers two
distinct strokes: that in (6a) is written top to bottom but right to left,
whereas that in (6b) is written from left to right but bottom to top.

(6) a. 扌

b. 子