La parola giapponese per 'penisola', l’interpretazione di composti sconosciuti secondo Suzuki Takao, e il contenuto descrittivo dei nomi propri

During his lifetime, Suzuki Takao, the well-known Japanese sociologist of language, developed a model for interpreting unfamiliar Japanese compounds by assigning a kun-reading to each constituent kanji. He proposed that by applying this model to compounds like 多島海 (which signifis a type of sea and is also the archaic name for the Aegean Sea), readers could more easily «explain» the term’s «meaning.» When 多島海 is used as a generic term for a class of topographical objects, the model is effective and accurately yields the interpretation “many-island sea”. However, if 多島海 is employed as a pelagonym, the compound’s structure doesn’t aid the reader in determining its actual referent. The property of having many islands is too broad to identify any specifi sea. This is because the distinctive meaning embedded in proper names is signifiant mainly to those who coined the term and initially used it. Over time, this signifiance diminishes. As a result, Suzuki’s approach has limited utility in ascertaining the referential aspect of proper nouns.