A Statistical Analysis of Morphemes in Japanese Terminology

In this paper I will report the result of a quantitative analysis of the dynamics of the consti tuent elements of Japanese terminology. In Japanese technical terms, the linguistic contribution of morphemes greatly differ according to their types of origin. To analyse this aspect, a quantitative method is applied, which can properly characterise the dynamic nature of morphemes in terminology on the basis of a small sample. 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n In computational linguistics, the interest in terminological applications such as automatic term extraction is growing, and many studies use the quantitative information (cf. Kageura & Umino, 1996). However, the basic quantitative nature of terminological structure, which is essential for terminological theory and applications, has not yet been exploited. The static quantitative descriptions are not sufficient, as there are terms which do not appear in the sample. So it is crucial to establish some models, by which the terminological structure beyond the sample size can be properly described. In Japanese terminology, the roles of morphemes are different according to their types of origin, i.e. the morphemes borrowed mainly from Western languages (borrowed morphemes) and the native morphemes including Chineseorigined morphemes which are the majority. There are some quantitative studies (Ishii, 1987; Nomura g¢ Ishii, 1989), but they only treat the static nature of the sample. Located in the intersection of these two backgrounds, the aim of the present study is twofold, i.e. (1) to introduce a quantitative framework in which the dynamic nature of terminology can be described, and to examine its theoretical validity, and (2) to describe the quantitative dynamics of morphemes as a 'mass' in Japanese terminology, with reference to the types of origin. 2 Te r m in o log i c a l D a t a