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

本研究的主要目的是系统地介绍德语、荷兰语和弗里斯语等现代西日耳曼语言在语法结构方面的对比情况。特别强调的是最后一个人，这是现存的唯一北海日耳曼人后裔，进一步分为三个主要亚群：西弗里西亚人、北弗里西亚人和东弗里西亚人。本研究取得的最重要的成果有三个方面：第一，关于西日耳曼语语言类型学的方法论概念的文章；第二，关于西弗里斯语动词语法的一系列文章，特别关注与日耳曼语相关的语言，其中最值得注意的是弗里斯语中的名词并入，与荷兰语和德语的对比；最后，荷兰语与邻近语言如德语、荷兰语和英语的音系学概述。这些研究也导致了对北日耳曼语定冠词的形态状态的类型学思考。可以得出的结论是，这项研究成功地扩大了日本德语和日耳曼语研究的范围，而这些研究在传统的日耳曼斯提克框架中被错误地忽视了。研究人员还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，这是通过访问这些国家实现的。

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.