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

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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.