BARRS, Keith    Department   Hiroshima shudo University  The Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences    Position   Professor
Date	2015/06
Presentation Theme	Comparing Japanese-English Dictionary Entries of English Loanwords with Corpus-Derived Lexical Profiles
Conference	ASIALEX 2015
Conference Type	International
Presentation Type	Speech (General)
Contribution Type	Individual
Details	When loanword descriptions in Japanese-English dictionaries are compared with corpus-derived lexical profiles of their collocational and grammatical behaviour, important differences becomes apparent. In particular, corpus data on individual loanwords can be combined into a systematic analysis of groups of loanwords, in order to see if any patterns emerge in relation to their behaviour in the language. This can help to draw out information about the semantic and pragmatic properties of the loanwords, something that is largely absent from Japanese-English dictionaries. This study looks at the kind of analyses that can be made of English loanwords in Japanese using corpus data, compared with the available descriptions in popular Japanese-English dictionaries. It raises the questions of whether or not these dictionaries are fit-for-purpose in describing the loanwords, and discusses the implications for English-speaking learners of Japanese.