Siebold's Place in the History of Japanese Language Research : An Examination of Relevant Original Materials(<Special Issue>The Current State of Document Research)

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  • 日本語学史におけるシーボルトの位置付け : 関係資料からの追求(<特集>資料研究の現在)
  • 日本語学史におけるシーボルトの位置付け--関係資料からの追求
  • ニホンゴガクシ ニ オケル シーボルト ノ イチズケ カンケイ シリョウ カラノ ツイキュウ

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Abstract

This article takes up the Epitome Linguae Japonicae, Siebold's account of the Japanese language, which has not received a very positive evaluation by later researchers, and attempts a re-examination of its place in research history. An examination of Siebold's own list of references in the work shows that the only written work that demonstrably influenced the Epitome was the French translation of Thunberg's Voyages. In addition, a detailed reading of the work and comparison with Kaempfer's works show that Siebold's system of transliterating Japanese was influenced by Kaempfer's system. While broadly following Kaempfer's method, however, Siebold adjusted and improved Kaempfer's transliteration. When compared to Thunberg's description of Japanese, Siebold not only corrects Thunberg's mistakes and misprints when quoting him, he also improves the content, in some cases based on data collected by himself, and generally takes a much more systematic approach to describing the language. As his account also contains linguistic terminology and analysis, as well as comparative linguistic perspective, posterity's criticism that his work hardly improves upon previous research is not founded on fact.

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