A Semantic Approach to Kanji Lexicography

The Japanese script consists of two phonetic syllabaries, called hiragana (eg ft* /ka/) and katakana (eg # /ka/), and thousands of Chinese characters, called kanji (eg ^ hon). Chinese characters have three basic properties: form, sound, and meaning. Many characters are of complex shape, some having more than twenty or even thirty strokes. Each character may be pronounced according to its Chinese derived on read­ ing, or to one of several native Japanese kun readings, and each reading may be associated with one or several (sometimes highly) polysemous words and/or mor­ phemes. Moreover, because of the presence of numerous homophones, the Japanese script is highly complex and requires considerable effort to learn. Japanese has been the subject of various linguistic studies, but little attention has been given to the systematic analysis of its writing system. Kanji are combined with each other to generate countless compound words from a basic stock of a few thou­ sand units. They function as a network of interrelated parts, not as a set of discon­ nected symbols. Though this is vaguely recognized by educators, it has been largely disregarded in the development of teaching programmes and the compilation of char­ acter dictionaries. The traditional approach places emphasis on the rote memoriza­ tion of characters and compounds, while the meanings and functions of individual characters are often ignored. Although the number of Japanese language learners has more than quadrupled over the past decade, a character dictionary for non-Japanese users analysing the semantics of kanji has never been compiled. The few existing works are either out-ofdate, contain many inaccuracies, or fail to show the meanings and functions of characters on the morphemic level. The lack of effective tools to overcome the diffi­ culties posed by the Japanese script has been one of the principal reasons for the relatively small number of foreigners to have truly mastered the language.