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BehaviorResearch Methods, Instruments,&Computers
2000,
32 (3),482-500
AJapaneselogographiccharacter
frequencylist forcognitive scienceresearch
NOBUKOCHIKAMATSU
DePaulUniversity,Chicago,Illinois
SHarCHIYOKOYAMA
NationalLanguageResearchInstituteofJapan, Tokyo,Japan
HIRONARINOZAKI
AichiUniversityofEducation,Kariya,Japan
ERIC LONG
NationalLanguage ResearchInstituteofJapan, Tokyo,Japan and
SACHIOFUKUDA
ThispaperdescribesaJapaneselogographiccharacter(kanji) frequency list, which isbasedon an analysis of the largest recently availablecorpusofJapanesewords and characters. Thiscorpuscom prised a fullyear of morning and evening editions of a major newspaper, containing morethan23mil lionkanjicharactersand morethan 4,000different kanjicharacters.Thispaperliststhe 3,000most fre quent kanjicharacters,as wellas an analysis of kanji usage andcorrelationsbetween thepresentlist and previousJapanesefrequency lists. Theauthorsbelievethatthepresentlist willhelpresearchers moreaccuratelyand efficientlycontroltheselectionofkanjicharactersin cognitivescienceresearch andinterpretrelatedpsycholinguistic data.
In manyempiricalpsycholinguisticstudies,word fre
quency is used as anindependentvariable toselectma terialshavingdesiredfrequencycharacteristicsor as a controlvariable tomatchtwo or more setsofmaterialsin order tominimizeperformancedifferencesattributable to wordfrequencyeffects in wordrecognition,memory, psycholinguisticresearch to focus on the frequency effects oflinguisticunitssmallerthan words, such asletterclus ters (e.g.,bigramsortrigrams),syllabic-typeunits (sylla ble vs.nonsyllable),morphemeunits, as well asposition
Appleman
&Mayzner, 1981;Grainger&Jacobs,1993; Srinivas, Roediger, & Rajaram, 1992). Forexample,logo graphiccharacterfrequency is a crucial factor toconsider in wordexperimentsusinglanguageswithlogographic scripts, such asChinese,Japanese,or Korean,whereeach logographiccharactermay function as a word(Matsunaga,
1996). In short, it isimportantto carefullycontrolthe fre
quencyofprintedcharactersand/orwords whenempiri cal psycholinguisticstudiesareconducted. N.
802 WestBeldenAvenue,
Chicago,IL60614(e-mail:nchikama@
condor.depaul.edu).
In thepast,compilinglinguisticcorporawas an ex
concernscausedbyhumanerror. However, ascomputer technologycontinuesto develop,researchersare obtain ing morereliablelinguisticcorporaandcompilingword orcharacterfrequencylists on the basis ofthesecorpora forlinguisticor cognitive scienceresearch.For American English, some widely used wordfrequencylists are the
Browncorpus(Kucera & Francis, 1967), theAmerican
Heritage WordFrequency
Book(Carroll,Davies,&Rich
man, 1971), and theThorndike-Lorgecount(Thorndike &Lorge, 1944; see thesummaryin Solso, Juel,&Rubin,
1982). Many
ofthesecorporaand lists are available in computerdatabaseformand/orthrough the Internet. Con sequently,researchersmay use thesecorporaand lists to controlwordfrequencyin empiricallanguageresearch more easily,efficiently,andaccuratelythan in the past. remainlimitedinnumberor are stillunderdevelopment (Edwards,1993; Leech &Fligelstone,1992).
WordandCharacter
FrequencyListsinJapanese
Over the last twodecades,researchersin the area
of experimentalpsychology, especially word recognition and memory, haveincreasinglyfocused on the Japanese lan guage, owing to the uniqueness ofits writing system (Kess
Copyright2000PsychonomicSociety, Inc. 482
&Miyamoto,1994; Paradis,Hagiwara,&Hildebrandt,
1985; Yokoyama, 1997). Inparticular,kanji(characters
in alogographicscriptthat is one ofthree scripts used in writingJapanese)has been widely used inexperimental materialsinorderto examine newaspects ofcognitive ment in theacquisitionand usageoflanguage.However, althoughmanystudieshave been conductedthatuse
Japanesewords, thedevelopment
ofJapaneseword fre quency lists or kanjicharacterfrequency lists has not kept up with thedemandfor such lists. As aresult,for exam ple, thekanjicharacteror wordfrequency ofselected kanji items has often not beencontrolledormentionedin Japanese wordrecognition studieswhen frequency has not been used as adependentvariable (e.g., Eko & Nakamizo,
1989;Flores
d'Arcais& Saito, 1993;Floresd'Arcais, Saito, Kawakami, & Masuda, 1994; Kikuchi, 1996; Mor ton, Sasanuma, Patterson, & Sakuma, 1992; Nagae, 1994; Naito &Komatsu, 1989; Osaka, 1992;Sekiguchi&Abe,
1992; Wang, 1988; Yokosawa
&Shimomura,1993). In many other studies, the frequency ofkanji characters or wordsiscontrolledon the basis of(1) theresearcher'ssub jective, intuitivejudgment(e.g., Flores d' Arcais, Saito, &Kawakami,1995; Hatta, Koike, &Langman,1994;
Shimomura
&Yokosawa, 1991),(2) theexaminee'sjudg ment, such assubjects'rating onselecteditems (e.g., Ya mada,Mitarai,& Yoshida, 1991), (3) thecategorization ofkanjicharactersstandardizedby theJapaneseMin istry ofEducation(e.g., Kyoiku kanji orGakushukanji 1; see, e.g.,Hayashi,1988; Hirose, 1992;Nakagawa,1994; Sakuma, Itoh, &Sasanuma,1989), (4) listscompiledby examinersthemselves(e.g., Wydell,Butterworth, &Pat terson, 1995; Wydell, Patterson, &Humphreys,1993), or (5) theNationalLanguageResearchInstitute's(NLRI's)
1962 or 1976word/characterfrequencylists(Cabeza,
1995; Morikawa, 1985; Naito
&Komatsu, 1988; Sasa numa, Sakuma, & Kitano, 1992;Tsuzuki,1993). One ofthe mainimpedimentsto thedevelopmentof Japanese wordfrequencylists is that theelectronicrep resentation ofJapanesecharactersismorecomplicated than that ofalphabeticallanguages. Atpresent,there are characters(i.e., kanaandkanji):JapaneseIndustrial Standards(JIS), Shift-JIS (SJIS),and Extended Unix Code (EUC). Generally, EUC is used in Unix workstations on the Internet, whereas JIS is used for Japanese electronic mail. However, SJIS has beenadoptedfor use with per tems are usedacrosstasks ormethods,one musttransfer onecharactercode to another, using aconvertersuch as the network kanji code conversionfilter(NKF).
Another factorimpedingthedevelopment
ofJapanese frequencylistsis theJapanesewritingsystemitself, whichcomprisesthreetypes oforthographies-hira gana,katakana,and kanji.Hiraganaandkatakanaare syllabic scripts in which each symbolrepresentsa sound unit(asyllable).These scriptseachcontain 46 basic forms, with additional diacritic and historical forms giving a totalJAPANESECHARACTERFREQUENCYLIST 483 of83hiraganaand 86katakanaformsencodedin JIS and
EUe.Hiraganaandkatakanasharethe samesyllabic
soundrepresentationand can betranscribedone by the other (e.g., a syllable
IsaIistranscribedasinhiragana
and kanji, is alogographicscriptadoptedfrom theChinese language,in which each symbolrepresentsmeaningand functionsas amorpheme.Asinglekanjicharactermay representanindependentword (e.g., *IhonI, book)or part ofaword (e.g.,*inB*Inihon/,Japan).The mean ing ofeachconstituent(i.e., asinglecharacter)in a kanji word issometimesless clear ortransparentthan that ofan independentword. Owing to themannerin which kanji charactersweretransferredfrom the Chinese to the Japa neselanguageover thecenturies,a single kanjicharac ter may haveobtainedmore than onereadingand may bepronouncedin severaldifferentways. Forinstance, thecharacter
Wi,whichmeanshead,isreadasIto/,
a greatnumber ofhomophones(i.e., kanji characters that share acommonpronunciation butrepresentdifferent meanings)occur in Japanese kanji usage. Forinstance, andmanyothers are allpronounced
Ikil.Thus, in con
trast to bothhiraganaandkatakana,kanjicharactersdo not have asystematicsoundrepresentationor a one-to onerelationshipbetween sound and symbol. Thenumber ofkanjicharactersis quite large andpracticallyuncount able (i.e., kanjidictionariesmay contain between 12,000 and 50,000 entries; Kindaichi, 1991; Morohashi, 1989). Among hiragana, katakana, and kanji, usually only one isconventionallychosen and used to write a given Japa nese word. Hiragana is usedprimarilyfor words that have agrammaticalfunction, such asparticlesorcase-makers, and for some nativeJapanesecontentwords.Katakanais used for loan words (i.e., wordsmainlyborrowedfrom westernlanguages,such asEnglish,French,and Por tuguese).Kanji is used forcontentwords, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives.? Thus, a singleJapanesesentence isusuallywritten with all threescriptscombined.
However, choice
ofscript is not alwaysconsistentand may vary,dependingon awriter'sintentionor apublish er'sguidelinesfor style. Forinstance,theJapaneseword meaningegg,pronounced
ItamagoI,could be written as
'k"iJ;.Z::inhiraganain onecontext,but asin kanji in anothercontext. In their study ofthesubjectivefrequency ofscripttype,Ukita,Sugishima,Minagawa, Inoue, and
Kashu(1996)studied750Japanesewords that can be
writtenin more than oneJapanesescript. The study was judgewhethera given word(writtenin a given script) is seenoften,occasionally,or rarely. Theresultsshowed that more than halfof the tested words wereidentifiedas words seen in more than one script. Thisinconsistencyin orthographicrepresentation makes word counting inJapa wordsegmentationin Japanese is more complex than that inEnglish,since wordboundariesare notseparatedwith spaces inwrittentexts. A single kanjicharactercouldbe amorpheme ofapartofa word or awordbyitselfand may bepronounceddifferently, depending on the context. With out clear wordboundaries,compoundwords are easily formed. Thus,complicationsin wordcountingand seg mentationpresentnontrivialchallengesfor those compil ing wordfrequencylists inJapanese.
Owing totheseproblems,few haveattemptedto make
wordand kanjicharacterfrequencylists inJapanese.The NLRI in Japanpublisheda wordfrequencylist in 1962, based on acorpusderivedfrom 90different journalsand magazineswith fivedifferentgenres,allpublishedin
1956.A total
of140milliontokens,consistingof40,000 different words (i.e., types), were analyzed inorderto de velopa frequency list ofwordspossessingafrequencyof at least nine. In 1976, theNLRIalsopublisheda kanji (character)frequencylistbasedon acorpuspublishedin
1966derived fromthreemajornewspapers,
Asahi,Yomi
uri, andMainichi.Thiscorpusprovidedatotalof
991,375 kanjitokensand afrequencylistof3,213 dif
ferent kanjicharacters.This was the firstattemptto an alyze aJapanesecorpuswithcomputers,and theresults were used tostandardizeandregulatethe use ofkanji characters formassmediaandeducationinJapan.For the past threedecades,researchershave used these lists as aninformativeresourcefor manylanguage-relatedre searchprojects. In 1997, theNLRIpublishedits 1962 list in floppy diskformat(NLRI,1997).
However,severalproblemsareassociatedwith the use
ofthe NLRI lists forempiricalstudies.First, the lists are basedondated mediasamples.Almostthreeorfour decades havepassedsince thecorpora ofthe 1962 and
1976lists werecollected.Consequently,thereliability
of these lists is open toquestion,since the useofwordsor kanji in massmediaandeducationmay havechanged. Second, the 1976 list does notidentifylow-frequency kanji. The 1962 word list does not contain wordspossessquotesdbs_dbs17.pdfusesText_23
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