Prototype Theory

In the classic view, categories were thought to be defined by necessary and sufficient criteria (Barnes, 1984). This means that members in the same category share the same properties and the boundary of each category is assumed to be distinct and clear. In this view, all members in the same category are considered to represent that category equally well (Jitsumori, 2006, p. 343). However, this classic view is not based on empirical or experimental studies but on philosophical thought, and it has been widely

48 _{For instance, Malay and Minangkabau are known to have a very clear semantic rule: ‘person is used} for all human beings and the animal classifier is used for all animals (Marnita 1996, as cited in Aikhenvald, 2000, p. 308).

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acknowledged that this view is not without problems (Lakoff, 1987, p. 6). The following are two major problems that have been identified through experimental studies.

It was first argued that, within a category, some members may be ‘better’ examples of the category compared to other members. Rosch and her associates conducted experimental studies (Rosch, 1973, 1975a, 1975b), and claimed that ‘many natural categories are internally structured into a prototype (clearest cases, best examples) of the category, with non-prototype members tending towards an order from better to poorer examples’ (Rosch, 1975a, p. 544). One of the best-known examples given in her study concerns the category of birds. Respondents in Rosch’s study considered robins and sparrows to be the best examples of the category, with penguins and bats the poorest examples.49 _{Likewise, football and baseball were regarded as the}

best examples of the category of ‘sport’, while cards and sunbathing were rated as the poorest examples (Rosch, 1975b). In the classic view, on the other hand, there are no better or poorer examples in a category, because each category is considered to consist of members whose ‘membership [is] defined by an item’s possession of a simple set of criterial features’ (Rosch, 1975b, p. 193). Thus, in the classic view, no more complex semantic structure is considered necessary for understanding category membership.

Another problem identified with the classic view is that categories are not formed only by the inherent properties of members. Categorisation is not the same at all times but sometimes depends on context. In Labov’s study (1973), for instance, participants were asked to tell what vessels were drawn in a set of pictures in two conditions: just being shown pictures of the vessels, and with being told that the vessels were for food. Answers given by the participants were different in the two different

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conditions. This is one of the experiments which led to the conclusion that categorisation is not done simply based on information inherent to the items to be categorised, but that contextual information is also taken into consideration.50

Prototype Theory has been applied not only to lexical categories but also to the category of NCs, a category that has not only lexical but also grammatical features (see 2.3.1). Regarding Japanese NCs, at least in the case of the most commonly used ones, each NC has a number of possible referents, all of which would be regarded by virtually all adult native speakers of the language to be ‘correctly’ classified by that NC.51 _{However, although all those referents are regarded as belonging to the category}

of ‘referents of the NC’, not all are equally good examples of the category. Each of these categories actually consists of prototypical referents and comparatively less prototypical referents.

For the Japanese NC system, Lakoff (1987) applied Prototype Theory to examine the NC hon (see 2.4.4 and 2.4.6). He identified ‘long and thin’ as the central senses of hon, so physically long and thin objects, such as sticks and pencils, are regarded as prototypical referents of hon. There are non-prototypical referents as well, which are also counted by hon, but are not literally long and thin. For example, some abstract concepts or events, such as telephone calls and home run hits in a baseball game, are regarded as non-prototypical referents of hon (Lakoff, 1987).

50 _{This claim is highly relevant to the present study. In general, referents are thought to always be} matched with the ‘grammatically correct’ NC. Yet, atypical matchings were also observed in the data examined. If these atypical matchings were encountered without any context, they would be automatically regarded simply as ‘grammatical mistakes’. However, because they do, of course, appear in a meaningful context, these matchings are well understood. This issue is addressed in 3.2.2. 51 _{There are some NCs that are used differently from general use in certain contexts or by certain groups} of speakers. For example, too 頭 is generally used for comparatively large animate beings such as horses and tigers, but can be used for small animate beings in a specific condition such as rats used for experiments, and insects which are very rare and get a good price for collectors, such as beetles. Also, there are NCs which are known and used only among experts.

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In this study, Prototype Theory is used as a framework in two different domains: with regard to referents of the target NCs, and to the meanings of these NCs. As we will see in the discussion below, these two domains are closely related but nevertheless need to be considered separately.

First, Prototype Theory is used with regard to referents of the target NCs. This has been already proposed in some previous studies (Lakoff, 1987; Matsumoto, 1991, 1993) as explained above in the case of the referents of the NC hon. In comparison to previous studies, it should be noted that this study examines authentic data in context and, as a result, concerns some cases that would not be considered ‘correct’ referents of the target NCs. For example, ‘correct’ referents of the NC hon would include both the prototypical referents (like ‘sticks’ and ‘pencils’), as well as less prototypical ones (like ‘telephone calls’ and ‘home run hits’), which are also classified by hon. In addition, however, this study also encounters some cases of absolutely atypical referents, which would be regarded (out of context) by native speakers as grammatically ‘incorrect’ choices for the NC concerned, and thus not actually in the category of ‘referents of the NC’ as defined above. In order to differentiate these different types of referents from each other, three terms are used in this thesis: ‘prototypical’, ‘less prototypical’, and ‘atypical’.

The term ‘prototypical’ is used for prototypical referents (like sticks and pencils for the NC hon), each of which satisfy a larger number of core semantic components of the NC than do ‘less prototypical’ referents (like telephone calls and home run hits for the NC hon). In addition, prototypical referents are also ones that are frequently seen or mentioned in general conversation, so much so that they easily come up in people’s minds as ‘prototype’, best case examples of the NC.

The term ‘less prototypical’ indicates referents that may exhibit a smaller number of the semantic components of the NC, and/or involve some non-literal extension of some of these components (telephone calls and home run hits for hon),

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and/or do not frequently occur in everyday conversation, but for which the NC concerned is still clearly considered ‘correct’. In other words, they are still very clearly in the category of the NC’s referents. These ‘less prototypical’ referents are generally called ‘non-prototypical’ in other studies, which tend to consider only the members within the category of ‘correct’ referents of the NC.

Lastly, this thesis uses the term ‘atypical’ to indicate referents which do not belong to the category of the ‘referents of the NC’ concerned at all as it is defined above, but which this study finds do occasionally occur as referents of that NC in authentic texts. These referents are actually prototypical referents of another NC. For instance, one of the target NCs in this study, hiki, is basically regarded as being used for animate beings other than human beings and which are comparatively smaller than human beings. Therefore, small, common creatures such as kittens, fish, and insects are ‘prototypical’ referents. On the other hand, amphibians and microorganisms are ‘less prototypical’ referents, as they are not as frequently observed or mentioned as prototypical referents in general. Finally, inanimate entities and human beings, which surprisingly do occasionally emerge as possible referents of hiki in the data, are regarded as ‘atypical referents’. This is because they do not satisfy the most basic semantic criteria of hiki: non-human, animate beings. Also, human beings have their own dedicated NC, nin.

Prototypical referents and less prototypical referents are both in the category of ‘referents of the NC’. As noted above, this category is defined as ‘referents that would be regarded by virtually all adult native speakers of the language to be ‘correctly’ classified by that NC’.52 _{Thus, prototypical referents and less prototypical referents}

are not expected to be completely distinct from one another, but rather to exist on a continuum; they differ in degree rather than in kind. Atypical referents, on the other

52 _{It would be difficult to define “‘all’ or ‘almost all’ adult speakers” here because usages of NCs can} vary extensively depending on generations, residential areas, and individuals.

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hand, are different in kind. They are outside the category of what is here termed ‘referents of the NC’, and have another NC as their most appropriate NC.

While prototypical and less prototypical referents of NCs were identified in most past studies mainly by experiments or surveys and the researcher’s own intuitions, this study approaches the identification of these referents at least partially through quantitative analysis of authentic data.53 _{The quantitative data allows the present}

study to investigate the frequency of the occurrence of referents of the target NCs. Also, the data is extracted from a large corpus of authentic written Japanese. Thus, the language data is neither controlled nor consciously generated by the researcher or by research participants, but naturally used by native Japanese speakers/writers. By checking the frequency of types of referents, prototypical and less prototypical referents of the NC are identified. Those data are next examined from a qualitative perspective. By examining both prototypical and less prototypical referents in the context in which they appear, the analysis reveals the meanings of the target NCs. These meanings are different from necessary conditions, but constitute a set of core meanings and extended meanings, which are explained below.

The second domain in which Prototype Theory is applied in this thesis is in relation to the meanings of the NC. From the analysis, it appears that each NC has a number of elements of meaning, which are introduced as ‘semantic components’ above (3.1.2). As mentioned previously, among these there are ‘core’ semantic components and ‘extended’ semantic components. However, great attention should be paid to the point that these ‘core’ semantic components do not necessarily correspond directly to necessary conditions for the NC to be used, nor to meanings that are shared by all prototypical referents of the NC.

53 _{As mentioned above, ‘less prototypical’ referents are mostly referred to as ‘non-prototypical’} referents in the previous studies.

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The identification of core semantic components begins with an analysis of the features that are shared by all referents that are considered by native speakers to be ‘correctly’ classified by the NC concerned.. These features must be included amongst the core semantic components of the NC. For instance, hiki is considered to first have the core meanings of ‘animate’ and ‘non-human’, features that are shared by all prototypical and non-prototypical referents (Matsumoto, 1991). In addition to that, ‘smaller than human beings’ is also considered a core meaning in this study, as revealed by a comparison with other NCs used for animate beings, such as too (comparatively large, non-human, animate beings).

However, in order to be able to fully understand the ‘extended’ semantic components that emerge when less prototypical and atypical examples are examined, it is important to understand any additional ‘semi-core’ semantic components which may naturally arise from these core meanings. These additional semantic components may cover broader referents than just the prototypical referents of the NC and there may be some semantic components that go beyond the core semantic components. From the three most basic meanings of the NC hiki—‘animate’, ‘non-human’, and ‘smaller than human beings’— for example, the additional semantic components of ‘natural’ and ‘less than human beings’ are frequently inferred. These are not included as core semantic components of this NC, but in between core and extended components not only because these meanings can be objectively extracted from the more basic meanings, but also because a thorough examination of the extended uses of the NC alerts us to their importance as part of its core meaning (see 4.2, 5.2, and also 5.3.3).

In addition to the core semantic components and ‘semi-core’ components, there are more potential meanings of an NC that can emerge depending on the referent with which the NC is matched and on the context in which the NC and the referent appear. These additional, potential meanings are referred to here as ‘extended’

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semantic components. In the case of the NC hiki, for example, the meanings of ‘unimportant’ or ‘cute’ are more subjective meanings that come to light only in specific contexts, so that these are regarded as extended semantic components (see 4.2 for a complete picture of the semantic components of hiki).

Thus, the idea of Prototype Theory is employed in the two domains: referents of the NCs and the semantic components of the NC. These domains are overlapping (prototypical referents tend to have a majority of core semantic components of the NC), but not identical.