Putri, Darni Enzimar (2017). Makna idiom Bahasa Jepang: Kajian Metabahasa Semantik Alami [The meaning of Japanese idioms: A Natural Semantic Metalanguage analysis]. PhD thesis, Universitas Udayana, Denpasar.

Written in Indonesian.

The research reported in this thesis focuses on the analysis of the meaning of Japanese idioms. The Japanese idioms investigated are limited to those including body part terms. The purpose of the research is twofold: (1) to describe and to explain by means of semantic primes a set of phrases belonging to the Japanese language, and (2) to describe and to analyse the semantic structure of idioms in the Japanese language. Anna Wierzbicka’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is used as the basic method for the analysis of the idioms.

The analysis indicates that the idioms can be divided into 3 prototypes: (1) a mental predicate prototype that includes the primes THINK, KNOW, FEEL, WANT, SEE, and HEAR; (2) a speech prototype that involves the prime SAY; and (3) a prototype involving action, events, movement, and contact that is formed around the primes DO, HAPPEN, and MOVE.