Contrastive Studies of German, Dutch and Frisian Grammatical Structures ― Toward a West Germanic Language Typology

本研究的主要目的是对所谓的现代西日耳曼语言，如德语、荷兰语和弗里斯兰语的语法结构的对比方面进行系统的说明。特别强调的是最后一个，这是唯一现存的北海日耳曼后裔，它进一步分为三个主要的亚群：西弗里西亚人、北弗里西亚人和东弗里西亚人。从目前的研究中获得的最重要的结果有三点：首先是关于西日耳曼语言类型学方法论概念的文章，其次是一系列关于西弗里斯兰语动词语法的文章，特别关注相关的日耳曼语言，最值得注意的话题是弗里斯兰语与荷兰语和德语的名词结合，最后是荷兰语与邻近语言如德语、荷兰语和英语的语音概述。这些研究也导致了对北日耳曼语批评定冠词形态地位的类型学思考。人们可以合理地得出结论，这项研究成功地大大扩大了日本德语和日耳曼语研究的范围，这些研究在传统的“日耳曼学”框架中被错误地忽视了。研究人员还通过访问北欧国家，加强了与北欧国家主要学术机构的一些有代表性的学者的合作。

The primary aim of this research has been to give a systematic account of the contrastive aspects on the grammatical structures of the so-called modern West Germanic languages such as German, Dutch and Frisian. Special emphasis has been laid on the last one, the only extant North-Sea Germanic descendant, which is further split into three major subgroups : West-, North- and East Frisian. The most important results obtained from the present research are threefold : First, the article on the methodological concept of West Germanic language typlology, second, a series of articles on the grammar of the West Frisian verb with special attention to the related Germanic languages, the most notable topic being the noun incorporation in Frisian as contrasted to Dutch and German, and finally the phonological overview of Dutch with reference to the neighboring languages such as German, Dutch and English. These studies have also lead to the typological considerations on the morphological status of the cliticized definite article in North Germanic. One may fairly conclude that this research has succeeded in enlarging substantially the range of the German and Germanic language studies in Japan which had wrongly been neglected in the traditional framework of "Germanistik". The researcher has also been able to intensify the cooperation with a number of representative scholars at major academic institutes of the Northern European countries, which has been made possible by visiting those countries.