皆川淇園の言語研究 : その意味論と構文論的な試みを中心に

Abstract

Kien Minagawa (1734-1807) is known as a Japanese Sinologist of the Edo period. The present author would like to argue that Minagawa's liguistic inquiry into semantics and the construction of sentences is worth noticing for the following four points: 1) Minagawa considered that demonstratives are at the root of language, and that they are not mere substitutes for substantives. His idea about demonstratives is common to Wilhelm von Humboldt and Charles S. Peirce in the West. 2) He linked the function of classic Chinese demonstratives to the system of person (first person vs. non-first person) for the first time in East Asia. 3) He considered that a sentence is constructed by the binomial elements, and he was especially concerned about the relation between the binomial elements ('tou (讀)' • 'ku (句)', 'yuu (幽)' • 'mei (明)'). 4) He clearly recognized that the meanings of a noun phrase vary according to the word order, and considered that the head of a sentence is different from the end of a sentence in the information structure of the sentence.