Unit 8. Using Corpora in Linguistic
Analysis
2020: MABUCHI Yōko, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
2021: KONDŌ Asuko, National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics

Summary
Recent years have seen a succession of Japanese corpora being released. This trend has led to aboom in empirical research on the Japanese texts included in such corpora. Japanese corpora
have also proved invaluable to historians of the Japanese language. A key corpus underpinningsuch historical research is the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics’ Corpusof Historical Japanese (CHJ).
In this unit, you will learn how to analyse linguistic data. You will use the Chunagon searchengine to search the CHJ and then process the search results.

1. Accessing CHJ with Chunagon
What is Chunagon?
Chunagon (https://chunagon.ninjal.ac.jp) is a web application for searching NINJAL’s Japanesecorpus (see Figure 1). The engine lets you perform simple word searches, as well as refine thesearch by morphology (you can search by short unit and by long unit). The application is free,
but you need to create an account.

Figure 1. After logging in to your Chugagon account, you are presented with this webpage,
where you select a corpus.

How do you use Chunagon?
Chunagon has four search modes and three search methods. The mode and format you want will
depend on your purpose (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Search screen

Search modes
Short units (default): In this mode, Chunagon restricts its search to short units. This mode isavailable for any corpus supported by Chunagon. The search treats ‘noun+めく’ as a single
word. Note, however, that you cannot search for two single units. For example, the engine will
retrieve no results if you search for 冬めく, as this comprises two short units (the noun 冬 andthe suffix めく).
Long units: In this mode, Chunagon restricts its search to long units. This mode is only available
for some of the corpora supported by Chunagon. You can use this mode with some of the CHJ
subcorpora (see Unit 6, Table 1). This mode treats a compound word as a single item. Thismeans that the engine will retrieve results if you searched for 冬めく. However, you would get
no results for provisionally created compounds such as 生孫王めく or 昔物語めく (neitherwould you get results if you searched for 生孫王 or 昔物語, without specifying the compound asa single word).
String search: In this mode, Chunagon searches for exact matches without restricting itself toshort or long units. As the results will only show complete matches, if you searched for 冬めく,
Chunagon will not retrieve any alternative conjugations such as 冬めき or alternative
orthographic renderings such as ふゆめく. This mode ignores functional and lexical boundaries;
therefore, if you search for the connecting phrase ものの, the results may include などもののしる or もののみ.
Status search: This mode lets you conduct a further search of the retrieved examples. Chunagon
can collate the sample ID with the starting point of the example. All examples are determined by
the same logic, which means you can search by collating these two things.

Search methods
Search by form (default): Chunagon lets you search by the default form of the target word. You
select the desired items from a dropdown menu, and then enter the search term in the search bar
or select it from a list of candidate terms. A number of metaterms are available for specifying thesearch string. Click on the 文字列検索 tab for a list of these metaterms (see Figure 3). By
specifying one or more kī キー (key criteria), you can simultaneously search for up to 10 terms.
The terms will always be connected by a Boolean AND, never an OR. You can also specify
collocating terms that must appear before or after the target string. A total of 10 collocating
terms can be specified, combining those before and after. To specify the distance of a collocatingterm from the kī or from the start of the string, enter ‘N 語’ (number of words away) or ‘N 語以内’ (no more than # words away).
Search by database criteria: This method is used for inquiries about databases. You can use
this method to search past search results retrieved by grammatical-form searches. Whensearching past results, you can change a Boolean AND to an OR.
Search by past criteria: When you search by grammatical form, Chunagon will record yourdatabase criteria. In future searches, you can use the same database criteria Chunagon recorded,or you can edit them.

Figure 3. List of metatermsSearch coverage
You can refine your search by certain parameters (see Figure 4). These comprise historic period,
subcorpus, whether the sample is core or non-core (a sample is core when the results of machinedriven morphological analysis have been supplemented with manually added morphologicalinformation and is non-core when the results have not been sufficiently corrected manually), thetitle of the works, the volume or category (dialogues, lyrics, descriptions), and the style andregister (whether the text uses a literary or colloquial register; it only applies to texts in or afterMeiji era). If you perform a search without specifying any of these parameters, Chunagon will
search the entirety of the data.

Figure 4. Screen for selecting search options

Search operations, download options
You can specify whether the search will include delimeters, whether you want the results todisplay the surrounding text (20 to 300 preceding or proceeding words), the scope forcollocations (whether the scope should extend across sentence boundaries), and whether toinclude any glossing (such as glossing indicating that a term is a kakekotoba, or indicating analternative reading). You can also specify the download format (if you do not specify this,Chunagon will store the results in a tab in a format suitable for Excel, but the filename extension
will be csv).
Click on the search button (検索) if you want to display the search results on your web browser(up to 500 items can be displayed). Click on the download button (検索結果をダウンロード) if
you want to download the results. Up to 100,000 items can be downloaded. See Figure 5.
Figure 5. Screen for selecting search operations and download option

Specifying concordance lines to display in search results
If you are going to display the search results on your web browser, you can specify theconcordance lines to be displayed (you can also change the settings after the results aredisplayed). See Figure 6. If you are going to download the search results, there is no need forspecifying this, as the downloaded results will include all lines.

Figure 6. Screen for specifying lines to display

Displaying search results
Chunagon will display the relevant line at each instance of the searched term (whether a short orlong unit), along with the KWIC results (see Figure 7). Click on the sample ID (サンプル ID)
field in the uppermost row to display detailed contextual information (see Figure 8).
Figure 7. Search results displayed on a web browser
Figure 8. Detailed contextual information

Informational resources about Chunagon
Manual for using Chunagon to search the CHJ: https://bit.ly/3knxC8v
CHJ video about how the diachronic corpora is constructed, and how it can benefit research on
historical Japanese: https://youtu.be/tKvVR2K2h2E
Powerpoint data for the above video: https://www2.ninjal.ac.jp/openhouse2020/pdf/b-04.pdf

2. Exercises: Searching with Chunagon
Searching with Chunagon
Corpora to be searched in each exercise: Edo Period Series.
Exercise 1. Specify multiple kī criteria: Search for multiple inflections for a ren’yō 連用形(continuative) form of a keiyōshi 形容詞 (adjectival verb).
Exercise 2. Search by metaphrase: Search for compound words that feature 人 in the rear partof the compound, such as akindo 商人 and zainin 罪人.
Exercise 3. Search without specifying any kī: Search for the Chinese character-pair 大事, andits kana rendering だいじ, as a postpositional.
Exercise 4. Search with edited search history: Search for multiple inflections for a ren’yō andrentaikei 連体形 (attributive form) keiyōshi by editing the search history.

Tabulate search results
For this step, you use Excel or a similar software to tabulate your search results. A pivot tableprovides an easy way to cross-tabulate the data. Use the following procedure to tabulate thesearch results retrieved in Exercise 1:

1. On Excel (or an equivalent), open the file containing the downloaded searchresults.
2. Save the file (currently a TXT file) as an XLSX file.
3. On the Insert tab, click PivotTable. Ensure that the location for the pivot table isNew Worksheet (this will usually be the default location). Click OK to create thepivot table in a new worksheet.
4. From the PivotTable Fields pane, drag the Genre field to the Rows area, drag theConjugation field to the Columns area, and drag either the Genre field orConjugation field to the Values area.
5. Drag the 部 (sections) to the Rows area (so that it appears below the Genre field).
6. On the Design tab, open the Report Layout dropdown menu, and select Show in
Tabular Form. Open the Subtotals dropdown menu, and select Do Not Show
Subtotals. Subsequently, sort the 部 into columns so that they correspond to thegenre labels. Genre labels should be arranged chronologically: 1) Chikamatsu, 2)
Share, and 3) Ninjō. The corresponding 部 labels are 1) Kyoto, 2) Osaka, and 3)
Edo.
7. On the Insert tab, go to the Charts group and select the bar chart.

Deciphering the tabulated results
The bar chart reveals that the u inflection for ren’yō and rentaikei keiyōshi features prominently
in the Kamigata subcorpora (Chikamatsu-joruri, Kyoto and Osaka share-bon) but less frequently
in the Edo subcorpora (Edo share-bon and ninjō-bon). Nevertheless, this inflection accounts foras much as 25% of the Edo share-bon. By limiting the results to this subcorpus, you can add
further interpretations.

Developing the analysis
Of the u inflections that appear in the Edo subcorpora, around half are postpositional taigūhyōgen 待遇表現 (formal expressions). One example is gozaru ござる (or gozaimasu ございます, ozarimasu おざります, ozaru おざる, and so on). Another example is zonzuru 存ずる (orzonjimasu 存じます). In light of this information, you now add subfields to the raw tabulated
data. First, you add three categories of keiyōshi postpositional: gozaru, zonzuru, and other.
Second, you add two regional categories: Kamigata and Edo. Third, you add three conjugation
categories: inflected, common form, and other. The result should look like the chart in Figure 9.

The chart reveals a conspicuous regional discrepancy in the use of inflection for keiyōshi with nopostpositional gozaru or zonzuru.

Further work
Perform the same tabulation and analysis for Exercises 2, 3, and 4.
Perform the same processes for other historic linguistic variations using the whole of the CHJ(from the Nara to Shōwa period)
Originally written by Yōko MABUCHI, 4 November 2020
Updated by Asuko KONDŌ, 30 November 2021