BARRS, Keith    Department   Hiroshima shudo University  The Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences    Position   Professor
Language	English
Publication Date	2015/02
Type	Other works
Peer Review	With peer review
Title	Lexical Semantics of English Loanwords in Japanese
Contribution Type	Single-Authored Publication
Journal	Learning, Working and Communicating in a Global Context. Proceedings of the 47th BAAL Meeting
Journal Type	Another Country
Volume, Issue, Pages	pp.29-35
Number of pages	7
Details	The Japanese language is home to tens of thousands of English loanwords, many having become fully integrated and frequent parts of the general Japanese language. Many fill lexical gaps opened up in the Meiji period with Japan’ s efforts to modernise and globalise (e.g. エンジン, enjin, engine), while others sit alongside semantic near-equivalent terms in the Sino-Japanese lexicon, and fulfil more pragmatic purposes within the language (e.g. ピー チ pīchi, peach, with its semantic near-equivalent 桃, momo, peach). In the former case, the words have been given the label ‘catachrestic innovations’, meaning loanwords which “introduce a new concept into the language” (Onysko&Winter-Froemel, 2011, p. 1555). In the latter case, they are known as ‘non-catachrestic innovations, or loanwords “characterized by the existence of a semantic near-equivalent” (2011, p. 1555).