Paper short abstract:

The usage database of function words in Japanese HAGOROMO was released in 2015, aiming to support Japanese language teachers and autonomous learners.  In order to show clearly the function of the direction word in a sentence, we will add information of grammatical function of each item.

Paper long abstract:

We have been building an online database named HAGOROMO and released it from 2015. It contains more than 1800 grammatical elements with the meaning, the levels, typical examples and authentic example sentences extracted from corpora of spoken language and written language. The online database HAGOROMO is helpful for the non-native teachers or intermediate and advanced students working and studying overseas to find examples, to understand the usages of grammatical elements.

We are now adding information of grammatical function on it. As when a student wants to write an essay or a teacher of Japanese wants to make tests, the information of grammatical function will help a lot.

Since the purpose of this database is to show how a grammatical element acts, we used the name of grammatical function of each word or phrase like below; "sentence pattern", "honorific(Keigo) ", "part of speech", "inflection" and "idiomatic expression".

"Sentence pattern" is (1) made up of two or more separated elements, but does not mean just a combination of the meanings of the words that make up the expression (eg. ~tara~ta means to find an unexpected thing) (2) composed of a combination of words of different parts of speech, and (3)does not inflect. As "honorific" covers not only honorific words but also sentence structure, we made a category "honorific". As at the beginner level there are stages of teaching inflection itself of inflected words, we set up a category called "inflection" and show inflecting forms handled in elementary textbooks.

When we think about grammatical function of grammatical elements, we counted the unit of a "word" flexible. We did not put it on not only to one word but also gave it to compound words. When a combination of two or more words fulfill a grammatical function equivalent to a word, we considered those words as belonging to the same grammatical category as the original word, and annotated the same grammatical function

By providing information of grammatical function in this way, it becomes easy for teachers or students to choose alternative words.