People

Mineharu Nakayama, Professor

Office Information
381 Hagerty Hall, 1775 College Road, Columbus, OH, 43210

Phone: 614-292-9016
Fax: 614-292-3225

Personal URL(s):
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/nakayama1/

JJ Nakayama, a trained linguist, is interested in different aspects of the Japanese language. He has been investigating the status of dropped elements such as subjects and objects (empty categories), in particular, questioning what the status of those dropped elements is, how they are interpreted, acquired, processed, used, and so on. He is currently investigating the interpretations of anaphoric expressions by American JFL learners and Japanese EFL learners. He is also looking into Japanese sentences produced by both native and non-native speakers of Japanese. Recently, he has been investigating the relationship between working memory and sentence difficulties. He is the Editor of the "Journal of Japanese Linguistics" since 2005. He has written "Acquisition of Japanese Empty Categories" and edited "Issues in East Asian Language Acquisition", and "Sentence Processing in East Asian Languages", among others. He also co-edited "Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics Vol. 2: Japanese" (Cambridge University Press). Another interest of his lies in Japanese culture; He served as a cultural advisor for a local Ohio TV station that covered the 1998 Nagano Olympic Games. He has also created, developed, and served as the resident director of the biannual OSU Japanese Study Abroad Program in Kobe since its beginning in 1994. He is the recipient of the 1998 Office of International Education Outstanding International Faculty Award, and served as the director of the Institute for Japanese Studies during 2002-2005 and the acting director of the East Asian Studies Center in 2004. He was the East Asian Studies MA Program Graduate Studies Chair during the 2006-7 academic year and is the DEALL Graduate Studies Chair during the 2007-8 academic year.