Our research is useful because (i) the proposed system can urge users to learn normative rules which have higher validity (i.e., the importance of learning) prior to other rules, where excessively strict judgments are avoided by determining the thresholds appropriately; and (ii) rules with degrees of validity are useful quantitative data for researching and teaching honorific Japanese linguistics.

First, I counted the potential verb, reru/rareru and kotogadekiru that had been used in the selected fourteen literary works. And then I analyzed the expective value's deviation that were calculated by the incidence rate and the expected value of the total usage rate.

The research indicated that there was a gradual decrease in the usage rate of reru/rareru and kotogadekiru, while there was a gradual increase in the usage rate of potential verb.

This paper presents results of a quantitative diachronic analysis of how abbreviations are used in modern written Japanese. Asahi Newspaper Corpus texts (23 years) were used to observe quantitative relations between abbreviations and original long words. As a result, 4 types of relations (tendencies) were found.

1. Abbreviations are now used as main variants in priority to long words (risutora / risutorakutyaringu).
2. Abbreviations replace their full variants gradually (kombini / kombiniensu sutoa).
3. Abbreviations are used more frequently, than before, but still do not replace the long word (keitai / keitai denwa).
4. Abbreviation appearance frequency increases and decreases irregularly. (supakon / su:pa: kompyu:ta:, to:shin / to:shi shintaku).

The above examples demonstrate peculiarities of abbreviation use in newspaper register. In some cases abbreviations like risutora show similar tendencies as in colloquial usage, while low usage ratio of keitai reflects tendencies usually seen in written language. At the same time, kombini reveals peculiarities of language use in different sections of newspaper (Opinion etc). Changes in usage frequency of supakon and to:shin are relevant to topicality degree of their referents.

We managed to examine only 4 types of relations. This research requires more abbreviations to be analyzed in order for the abbreviation use typology to be approved.

This paper discusses the meaning of the Japanese word ingin-burei (politely insolent), specifically what its prototype is and whether it is understood differently by people with different attributes. We formulated a prototype for ingin-burei, consisting of three elements: a high degree of formality, a low degree of directness, and a low degree of agreeableness. Based on examples from corpora, we assumed five types of ingin-burei.

We administered two surveys, first to undergraduates, second to graduate students and professors. In the first survey, hypothetical situations which described speech acts embodying combinations of these three elements were presented to subjects, to be judged on the degree to which the character in the situation could be said to be formal, direct, and agreeable. In the second, the same situations were presented to be judged on the degree to which the character could be said to be ingin-burei. The results were analyzed as to the effects of types of ingin-burei and those of attributes of the subjects. In both surveys, the prototype theory of ingin-burei was confirmed. Further, parts of the results were examined to find the correlation between the surveys.

Lastly, we point out some problems caused by ingin-burei to politeness theory.

It is recognized that frequency of Katakana representation is increasing in newspapers or magazines in recent years, but few systematic or quantitative analysis has been reported regarding the word representation, so far. Based on a newlycompiled large-scale Japanese corpus (BCCWJ), we perform statistical analysis of Katakana representation both for Japanese native words and the words imported from classical Chinese. The analysis shows that the tendency of Katakana representation largely depends on the word itself, and therefore the tendency can be considered as useful information that should be described in dictionaries. We also show that frequency of Katakana representation for each word exhibits a specific pattern in terms of source types, such as newspapers, magazines, and books, as well as the word types, such as onomatopoeia, mimesis, and word commonness.