Japanese
Non-repetition in Japanese literary texts from the 18th and 19th centuries
Investigation of 8 short Japanese texts
The texts are taken from a literary anthology *), and date from 1720-76 (3 texts), 1807-13 (3 texts), 1829-42 (2 texts). Three are (parts of) dramas, the rest prose fiction, short story or novel. The text specimens have totally some 4.000 words (1.550 different items). Generally about 500 words should be sufficient to have reliable values.
In these texts is examined the total group of CVC sequences. The results show that repetition - although existing, and being exploited consciously in a number of occasions - is less present than a casual arrangement would produce, that is: there is in the Japanese vocabulary a tendency to avoid non-functional repetition. The study describes some instances, where it can be proved statistically, that - in situations with optionality - repetitive sequences occur relatively less frequent than do others with no or little repetition. I conclude that in the Japanese language, in spite of all the repetitive words and sequences, is active an overall tendency to avoid non-functional repetition. And this is, in fact, necessarily so, because it makes it possible to let the relatively rare repetitions have an effect.
This basic condition of the Japanese language is perfectly consistent with the result of a series of previous reports of mine (see bibliography), dealing with Spanish, Italian, Rumanian, Danish, and Etruscan, and a number of unpublished studies treating Latin, Greek, French, English, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Catalan, Provençal and Friulan, where the existance of such phenomena is demonstrated in these languages. It therefore must be concluded that we have identified a Linguistic Universal.
This tendency to non-repetition is part of the basic structure of Language, independent of the type of language or dialect, of the historical period and of the stylistic level, and it is found in phonetics, morphology (including word formation) as well as syntax. It is a characteristic feature of this general tendency that it always exercises its influence, and when we find cases where the influence seems to show no effect, the reason is that some other linguistic function, of a more specific type, has overthrown the non-repetition.
*) Lewin, Bruno (ed.), Japanische Chrestomathie / von der Nara-Zeit bis zur Edo-Zeit, I. Kommentar, Wiesbaden, O. Harrassowitz, 1965, p. 324-62.