Oku HIROAKI (奥 浩昭)

This is a note or sketch on some concise English expressions useful for the learner of the language. The author refers to the following four expressions:1) We talked him into going alone. (= talked with him and succeeded in getting him to go)2) He moved very slowly, inching his way up the steep sides. (= moving his way inch by inch)3) He is one of university-paid personnel. (= paid by the university)4) He is a former president of the company and expects to be treated accordingly. (= in agreement with the fact)"A concise expression" is defined as:Given two expressions A and B, where the two expressions share the same cognitive meaning, the expression A is more concise than the expression B when the former is composed of fewer words than the latter."University-paid" in 3), for example, is paraphrased by "paid by the university, and the former expression is more concise than the latter. The Japanese counterparts of the underlined phrases above are less concise. "Inching his way" in 2), for example, is put into Japanese: ippo ippo (= inch by inch) susumu (=make one's way). Utilizing the productive expressions mentioned above, the learner of English is expected to use more effective, English-like expressions.

This paper suggests the possibility that some uses of nouns and other expressions in a prose work by SAITO Mokichi, a celebrated Tanka poet, might have influenced the literary style of the prose of TAKENISHI Hiroki, a distinguished novelist, literary critic and essayist. Among the typical examples is:kodai nihonngo no yushu (= excellence of the ancient Japanese lanuguage) (M.SAITO) uta no dodo (= magnificence of the song) (H.TAKENISHI) The above suggestion comes from two observations:1) The foregrounding of nouns shown above has seldom been used by most writers.2) TAKENISHI wrote several times that she has been influenced by SAITO's analysis of ancient Japanese poems and by his literary style.