Mapping Lexical Knowledge through the Construction and Utilization of a Large-Scale Database of Japanese Word Associations

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This research project has been seeking to investigate lexical knowledge by mapping out the associative structures that exist for Japanese words. To that aim, the central focus of the research has been the ongoing construction of the large-scale Japanese Word Association Database(JWAD)(Joyce, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c, 2005d, 2005e, 2006, 2007 ; Joyce & Miyake, 2008). The project has also been exploring the utilization of the JWAD to creating lexical association network maps and to clustering semantic network representations of the JWAD, as approaches to tracing out the rich networks of associations that connect words together and to visualizing the hierarchical structures within semantic spaces(Joyce & Miyake, 2007, 2008 ; Miyake & Joyce, 2007a, 2007b, in press ; Miyake, Joyce, Jung, & Akama, 2007). As examples of the wide range of applications for the JWAD and the lexical association network maps, the project has also conducted some studies in the areas of Japanese language instruction(Joyce, Takano, & Nishina, 2006 ; Takano, Joyce, & Nishina, 2006, 2007), Japanese lexicography(Joyce, 2005b, 2005d, 2006; Joyce & Srdanovic, accepted), and the Japanese writing system(Joyce, 2007).