Language revitalization through lexical modernization and neologism-coining : The current state and future tasks of modernizing Ainu lexicon

要旨

Being able to use an endangered language in modern everyday life is an important part of language revitalization. However, most endangered languages lack a modern lexicon, and it needs to be deliberately created. Many language revitalization projects have established new words committees to take care of lexical modernization. Lexical modernization has also been conducted in Ainu language revitalization, but the process and different initiatives have not yet been comprehensively analyzed. The objective of this article is to analyze what kind of lexical modernization work for Ainu has already been done and what kind of tasks remain to be done. The analysis is conducted by reviewing the prior research about Ainu and other indigenous languages’ lexical modernization. The lexical modernization work conducted in other language revitalization projects has been used as examples and to draw ideas on how to proceed in the case of Ainu. The main findings are that while several projects have developed new lexicon for Ainu, there are no established guidelines for neologism-creation and the results of the projects are not published in a centralized way. Thus, this paper argues that Ainu language revitalization would benefit from establishing a language planning agency that would take care of coordinating lexical modernization.

主題