was a professor of Japanese

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

. He is noted for developing the Process Theory of Language (言語過程説, ''gengo katei setsu'') and his criticism of Ferdinand de Saussure.

Biography

Tokieda was born on December 6, 1900 in Tokyo. In his early years, he was already interested in the Japanese language and resolved to devote his life's work on this field. He became a pupil of

Shinkichi Hashimoto was a Japanese linguist, born in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, Japan. Biography Hashimoto is especially noted for the discovery of Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai, which makes it clear that Old Japanese made more syllabic distinctions than later periods o ...

. However, he criticized Hashimoto's

Japanese grammar Japanese is an agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with p ...

and created his own "Tokieda grammar".

Language process theory

The introduction of Saussure's work, particularly ''Cours'', launched a significant semiotic argument in linguistic in Japan. Tokieda presented his own theory in opposition to that of Saussure, which turned out to be based on his misinterpretation of the latter's position. It was presented in his book ''Principles of the Japanese Language: Establishment and Development of Language Process Theory''. It became evident that Tokieda's position is aligned with Saussure because the latter maintained that "general linguistics" is not about language in general. This is similar to Tokieda's view of "extreme specialization" of the Japanese grammar through the study of ''kokugaku'' or Japanese classics. Tokieda's theory also criticized Yoshio Yamada's position that ''kokugogaku'' should only refer to studies done by Japanese people on their own language and exclude those undertaken by foreigners. According to Tokieda, the difference in terms of research conducted by the Japanese and foreign scholars rests on the used approaches and that one cannot say one is ''kokugogaku'' and the other is not. Tokieda also stressed that the concept of ''kokugo'' must not be defined as the language of the Japanese Empire but as one that it is based on its internal linguistic characteristics.

References

Bibliography

* Tokieda (1940). ''The History of Japanese Linguistics'' (國語學史, ''Kokugogaku shi'') * Tokieda (1941). ''The Principles of Japanese Linguistics'' (國語學原論, ''Kokugogaku genron'') Academic staff of the University of Tokyo Linguists from Japan 1900 births 1967 deaths 20th-century linguists Linguists of Japanese Okayama University alumni {{Japan-linguist-stub