Japanese Linguistics

 

Japanese linguistics tree diagram

Japanese linguistics in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures provides both breadth and depth in introducing a wide range of Japanese linguistics to students. Its courses focus on training students in the activity of "doing linguistics," from recognizing and construing a problem to framing a hypothesis, through data collection and analysis to arguing a position on that problem. Students are guided in developing both spoken and written presentation skills for in-class and professional presentations as well as for publication.

Our program is strong in historical linguistics, pedagogical linguistics, and synchronic linguistics, both theoretical and experimental. In historical linguistics, our strengths lie in the prehistory of Japanese, morphology and phonology, grammar/discourse interfaces, and issues in grammaticalization. In synchronic linguistics, faculty specialize in syntax, syntax-semantics interface, pragmatics, discourse/conversation analysis, lexical and sentence processing, the psycho- and sociolinguistics of the writing system, language acquisition, and language-culture interfaces.

Graduate students with a linguistic concentration are expected to be familiar with both earlier and present-day Japanese, possess a general knowledge of the varieties of Japanese, and develop specific knowledge on selected aspects of the language. They are expected to demonstrate understanding of linguistic theories and identify the implications of their findings, and the ability to use research tools to obtain and analyze salient data.

Other departments within OSU provide our students opportunities for study beyond what is available in DEALL. These include Cognitive Science, Communication, Computer & Information Science, English, Education, French & Italian, Germanic Languages & Literatures, Linguistics, Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, Philosophy, Psychology, Slavic & East European Languages & Literatures, Spanish & Portuguese, and Speech & Hearing Science.

Faculty working in this area:  Mineharu Nakayama, Charles Quinn, James Unger, Etsuyo Yuasa