Mineharu Nakayama is a Professor of Japanese linguistics specializing in psycholinguistics. As a trained linguist, he is interested in different aspects of the Japanese language including crosslinguistic influence. The majority of his research publications lie in first and second language acquisition and language processing, though he has also published articles on syntax, pragmatics, phonetics, and language teaching. Notably, he has developed measuring tools of L2 Japanese working memory capacity with his students, L2 Japanese Reading Span Test (with Masayuki Itomitsu) and L2 Japanese Speaking Span Test (with Yuki Hattori). 

He is the author of Acquisition of Japanese Empty Categories (Kurosio Publishing, 1996; discussing Japanese native children’s interpretations of null subjects and objects in Japanese), a coauthor of 海外短期英語研修と第２言語習得 [Short-term English Study Abroad and L2 Acquisition] (Hituzi Syobo, 2010; with Noriko Yoshimura; discussing the designs and activities of the three week and six week English study abroad programs for Japanese college students and the improvement of their English skills in those programs), 第２言語習得研究への誘い：理論から実証へ  [An Invitation to Second Language Acquisition Research: Theory to Experiment] (Kurosio Publishers, 2018; with Noriko Yoshimura; discussing various aspects of L2 English acquisition by L1 Japanese speaking learners and L2 Japanese acquisition by L1 English speaking learners) and なぜこの英語はむずかしいのか：考え方と教え方  [Why is this English difficult? How to think and how to teach] (Kurosio Publishers, 2025; with Atsushi Fujimori and Noriko Yoshimura; discussing various aspects of L2 English acquisition by L1 Japanese speaking learners with suggestions for L2 English teaching in Japan). In addition to linguistic books, he also published a practical language teaching resource book Let's Play Games in Japanese (National Textbook Co., 1992; with Scott McGinnis and Tao-Chung Yao) in his earlier time.

He also edited Issues in East Asian Language Acquisition (Kurosio Publishers, 2001), Sentence Processing in East Asian Languages (CSLI, 2002), and the Handbook of Japanese Psycholinguistics (De Gruyter Mouton, 2015). He was a co-editor of the Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics Vol. 2: Japanese (Cambridge University Press, 2006; with Reiko Mazuka and Yasuhiro Shirai), Studies in Chinese and Japanese Language Acquisition: In Honor of Stephen Crain (John Benjamins, 2017; with Yi-ching Su and Aijun Huang) and a number of conference proceedings and working papers.  

He served as the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Japanese Linguistics from 2005 to 2012, one of the guest co-editors of the special issues in 2018 and 2020, and the guest editor of the special issues in 2024 and 2026. 

He was the Director of the OSU Institute for Japanese Studies (2002-5), Acting director of OSU East Asian Studies Center (2003-4), and held two visiting professorships at the University of Shizuoka (2007-14) and the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (2012-16) in Japan. He has been a board member of the Japan Second Language Association since 2005, and is currently serving a 5 year term of the English Linguistics Society of Japan’s editorial advisory board till 2030.