News

March 2022

3/7  大野剛・鈴木亮子「会話におけるpseudo-cleftってこっちじゃない？」

          シンポジウム「日常会話コーパス」VII

3/9  鈴木亮子・大野剛・第十早織「動詞の繰り返しからreactive tokenへ」

          Symposium on Formulaicity in Interactional Discourse

3/11 大野剛「日常会話から日本語を眺めてみよう」

            第5回HiSoPra*研究会（歴史社会言語学・歴史語用論研究会）

October 9, 2021

Kerry Sluchinski just presented at the 29th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference. [program]

Our good friend Yoichi Mukai successfully defended  his Ph.D. dissertation entitled: 

Production and Perception of Reduced Speech and the Role of Phonological-orthographic Consistency

Congratulations! 

Our own Minako Noda successfully defended her MA thesis entitled:

How the Japanese “Contrastive” kedo is Structured and Used in Everyday Conversation.

Congratulations!

Our good friend Mei Nan is featured in the faculty news!

https://www.ualberta.ca/arts/faculty-news/2020/june/convocation/convocation-20-mei-nan.html

Our own Chiho Ogawa has successfully defended her thesis, soon to receive a Master of Arts in Japanese Language and Literature. Her thesis is entitled:

The Vitality of the Ikema Dialect of Miyako Ryukyuan

We send her our biggest congratulations and look forward to seeing where her work leads in the future!

Feb 13-14, 2020

Our friends, Kerry Sluchinski and Xiaoyun Wang presented at the MLCS Graduate Student Conference 2020, University of Alberta. 

Feb 4-7, 2020   

Shui Li, Minako Noda, Xiaoyun Wan and Cheer Wu presented at the International Colloquium on Conversation Analysis in East Asian Languages at the University of Alberta with Professor Mary Shin Kim from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Saori Daiju and Kanza Tariq, VERY belated Congratulations on your graduation! 

We look forward to your success in the future. 

Please come out to the workshop Mediums of Discourse Exchanges on October 31st - November 1st. Professors Ross Krekoski, Misumi Sadler and Hongyin Tao will be giving talks. See you there! 

Here are the title and abstract of Professor Hongyin Tao's talk. 

It will be taking place at CAB 239 at 5:00 pm on October 31st. See you there! 

Social, Cultural, and Linguistic Dimensions of Creative Language Use in China’s Internet and New Media

Creative language use in the forms of neologism, borrowing, substitution, pun, script manipulation, genre innovation, and so forth, in contemporary China shapes and reflects sociopolitical development in an increasingly globalized Chinese society and with a linguistic and cultural favor that is distinctively Chinese. This talk details some of the creative language use patterns and explains why they can be viewed as the direct result of the interplay of globalization, identity negotiation, as well as political struggle, among other factors. 

Professor Hongyin Tao (UCLA) will be visiting us on October 30th through November 1st! 

The next CoLang will be taking place at the University of Montana in Summer 2020! 

June 9-14 

Kerry, Saori, Stefana, Xiaoting, Xiaoyun, Yoshi, Yue and Zixuan will present at the 2019 International Pragmatics Conference at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. 

Kerry Sluchinski and Xiaoyun Wang presented at the MLCS Graduate Student Conference 2019, University of Alberta. 

We are pleased to welcome Yue Guan to our lab! She is a visiting student from the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and is going to study at the University of Alberta for one year.

Dec 27  Tsuyoshi Ono presented at  the 15th Spoken Discourse Linguistics workshop at TUFS, Japan. 

Xiaoting Li, Tsuyoshi Ono and Saori Daiju will present at the upcoming 2018 JK Preconference Workshop, Referentiality in Asian Languages in UCLA, USA. See you all there!  [program]

Zixuan Song, Stefana Vukadinovich and Xiaoyun Wang  will present at the upcoming AMPRA conference in the University at Albany, State University of New York, USA. [program] 

Congratulations to our Graduate Students!

Our own Saori Daiju and Kanza Tariq have recently finished their MA projects. Their theses are entitled:                       

Saori Daiju: "The Unspecified Use of Demonstrative are in Japanese Everyday Talk"

Kanza Tariq: "The ‘Fuzzy’ Boundary Between Two Types of Japanese Adjectives" 

We look forward to their professional success in the future! 

Xiaoting Li, Tsuyoshi Ono, Saori Daiju and Xiaoyun Wang will present at the upcoming ICCA2018 in Loughborough, UK. See you all there!  [program]

1st year linguists are talking at the Department of East Asian Studies 2018 Graduate Colloquium!

Date: April 13th, 3:00-5:30pm

Place: Pembina 3-58

Zixuan Song

        Collaborative construction of turns in Mandarin Chinese

Stefana Vukadinovich

        Interactional Functions of Imperative Sentences in Mandarin Conversation 

Our graduate student Saori Daiju is talking at the lunch time talk series by Prince Takamado Japan Centre for Teaching and Research!

Place: CAB 369

Time: March 28, 12:00-12:50pm

Title: The unspecified use of the Japanese demonstrative are 'that' in everyday speech

SDRS is happy to announce that we are hosting the Referentiality Workshop in September!

We are presenting at the MLCS graduate conference!

Date: February 15th, 10:05-11:25

Place: Arts 326 (Senate Chamber)

Xiaoyun Wang

        Suoyi ‘so’ as a part of account in Mandarin conversation

Saori Daiju

        Grammar in Japanese question-response sequence: A study of nani ‘what’ in specifying and telling questions

Stefana Vukadinovich 

        Imperative sentences in Mandarin conversation

Our friend Yoichi Mukai is talking at the talk series by Prince Takamado Japan Centre for Teaching and Research!

Place: CAB 357

Time: Wednesday January 24, 12:00-1:00 pm

Title: The effect of speech style on phonetic reduction of nasals and voiced stops in Japanese

Our own Xiaoting Li is talking at the Linguistics Colloquium

Place: CAB 239

Time: January 26, 2:00-3:30pm

Title: Interpersonal Touch in Mandarin Conversation

Abstract:

This study investigates the interactional functions of a particular bodily-visual practice, i.e., interpersonal touch (IT) in Mandarin face-to-face conversation. Adopting the methodology of Conversation Analysis, Interactional Linguistics, and Multimodal Analysis, this study examines 6 hours of everyday Mandarin Chinese face-to-face conversation. An examination of the data shows that IT has multiple interactional functions. One particular function is in the construction and contextualization of conversational joking. Specifically, it is used as a visual cue to contextualize conversational joking together with other vocal, verbal, and visual practices. The IT in conversational joking exhibit some recurrent formal features such as touching with whole palm with open hand palm down and extended contact time. The IT in the data tends to co-occurs with three types of conversational joking: teasing, joking about an absent other, and self-denigrating joking. IT often co-occurs with other vocal and visual practices, such as mutual gaze, laughter, and spatial-orientational change of the body in contextualizing conversational joking in Mandarin conversation.

Look who has been interviewed (see chapter 15)!

文献・インタビュー調査から学ぶ会話データ分析の広がりと軌跡: 研究から実践まで

Xiaoting Li, Tsuyoshi Ono, Yaqiong Liu, and Saori Daiju will present at the upcoming 2017 International Pragmatics Conference in Belfast, UK. See you all there! [program]

Our own Tetsuya Miyaguchi just started his new position at Tokyo University of Social Welfare. Congratulations!!!

We are presenting at CAJLE!

Saori Daiju

    Not saying exactly what it is is sometimes good enough: the unspecified use of demonstrative are in Japanese everyday talk

Kanza Tariq

    “Fuzzy” boundaries between the two kinds of Japanese adjectives

Look!

Li, Xiaoting and Tsuyoshi Ono, eds. 2019. Multimodality in Chinese Interaction. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Our first year grad students are presenting at the Department of East Asian Studies 2017 Graduate Colloquium

Date: Thursday, April 13, 2-4 pm

Place: Pembina 3-04

Saori Daiju 

    Distal demonstrative are for unspecified referents in Japanese everyday talk

Kanza Tariq 

    “Fuzzy” boundaries between the two kinds of Japanese adjectives

Xiaoyun Wang 

    The interactional function of suoyi in Mandarin Chinese conversation

Information session with regard to the MA program in East Asian Studies (career in Japanese teaching in North America)

Time: 4:30-5:30 on 4/12place: Arts 501 (take the south stairs)

The session will be given in Japanese

Saori Daiju is talking at MLCS Graduate Student Conference

https://mlcsconnections.wordpress.com/

Chinese linguistics talk on 11/23

Time: 11/23 1:30-2:40 pm

Place: Arts 501 (take the south stairs to get there)

Yaqiong Liu (Shanghai Maritime University)

        Interactional Functions of the Utterance-Final “le” in Museum Guide's Talk

Abstract: The particle “le” used at the end of utterances in museum guides’ talks can be seen as an emergent phenomenon from discourse. Firstly, it is different from the standard “le”, which is typically recognized as indicating a change of state, in spite of both being at the utterance-final position. Secondly, it appears mainly in tour guides’ informational speech to visitors. Most of the tokens are used in conjunction with definiteness marked utterances and in situations where there is a transition of scenes (including the movement of sight). Thirdly, it can be omitted without affecting the meaning of the utterance where it appears. This paper finds that this kind of “le” does not appear in casual speech and other discourse genres. It is an interactional device used for the museum guide to involve the audience. Specifically, it functions to remind the listeners the changes of position, topic, or knowledge state. Based on authentic data (4 hours of recorded museum tours), the paper reports the distribution, constraints, interactional functions of this type of “le” and tries to offer an analysis of the motivations of its use.

Deadline extended!

The 3rd Language Documentation Training in Miyako, Okinawa

Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, TUFS

The deadline has been extended to 11/9 (in Japanese Standard Time).

-------------------------------------------------------------

Call for participants

We invite applications for participation in the 3rd Language Documentation Training Workshop in Miyako, Okinawa to be held in February 2017 (17th-23rd). This workshop series has been conducted by the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA). This workshop has been planned to provide training in language documentation in the local context. This is part of the effort to stimulate and support research on endangered languages spoken in Okinawa and also language documentation research in general. The workshop is designed for beginning researchers without much experience in working with Miyako and other Ryukyuan languages. We especially focus on the human aspects in working with the speakers and communities in Okinawa. A good command of conversational Japanese is required.

The application must arrive no later than 23:59pm, November 2, 2016 (in Japan Standard Time).

Further information: Click here.

Application: Apply by filling out the online application form.

For further information, please contact: Prof. Toshihide Nakayama Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS)

e-mail: nakayama [at] aa.tufs.ac.jp

Talks by East Asian Studies grad students (Japanese and Chinese)

Time: Oct 25 3:00-4:30 PM

Place: Arts 501 (take the south stairs to get there)

1) V na (sa) soo da: A survey-based study of evidential 'variants' in Japanese

Tetsuya Miyaguchi

In the Japanese language, it is known that when the evidential soo da ‘looks like’ connects to a negative predicate, an additional element sa occasionally appears between the negative marker and soo da, giving rise to two different forms, na soo da and na sa soo da. An example is shown below:

ame ga         fura-na (sa) soo da

rain NOM  fall-NEG

‘It looks like it’s not going to rain.’

While previous studies consider that na soo da and na sa soo da do not differ in meaning or use, seeing them simply as ‘variants,’ these two forms actually seem to give somewhat different impressions. In the case of na sa soo da, it sounds as if the speaker is speaking with some form of certainty, while on the other hand na soo da sounds as if the speaker is speaking based on their intuition.

This study looks into the possibility that the so-called ‘variants’ na soo da and na sa soo da actually differ in meaning and, therefore, in use. With my hypothesis that ‘visual evidence’ and ‘time to process information’ play some roles in the choice between na soo da and na sa soo da, I will use a questionnaire survey to look at how speakers actually choose between the two forms in the contexts involving these factors. Based on the results, I will show that na soo da and na sa soo da may be used differently according to these factors.

2) The Usage of Third-Person Pronoun ta in Chinese Social Media

Kerry Sluchinski

Pronouns are a functionally diverse category of human language used every day. They not only function as reference, but also reflect the societal values of language users. This research focuses on the use of a non-standard form of third-person pronoun in Chinese social media. There are three third person singular pronouns in Mandarin Chinese: 他 (ta‘he’), 她 (ta ‘she’), and 它 (ta ‘it’). Although they have different written forms, their pronunciations are identical (ta). The romanized (alphabetic) form of this pronunciation as ta in Chinese social media is considered a non-standard spelling of the homophonic grapheme type for third person singular pronouns.

There are three variants of the non-standard spelling ta: TA, ta, and Ta. The research examines (i) The linguistic environment of the variants of ta (TA,Ta,ta), and (ii) The interactional usage of these variants. The study aims to uncover any interrelatedness between the linguistic environment and the usage of each variant. The study is conducted by both qualitative and quantitative analyses of data obtained on the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo (the equivalent of Twitter in China).

Examination of the data shows that ta is designed by users to exploit its gender ambiguity property to achieve a variety of interactional purposes. Institutional accounts utilize ta in advertisements/promotional texts to appeal to a larger consumer audience instead of specifying gender. Interactional functions of referential ambiguity and simultaneous referencing such as these are possible due to the inherently gender-ambiguous property of ta in the ta phenomenon. Results also lead the study to conclude that ta is a pragmatic device used to facilitate immediacy, thus resulting in personalization and engagement.

Key Words: Semantics, Mediated Discourse, Language Variation, Pronouns, Immediacy

Congratulations to our Graduate Student!

Our own Tetsuya Miyaguchi has successfully defended his thesis, soon to receive a Master of Arts in Japanese Language and Literature. His thesis is entitled:

V na (sa) soo da: A survey-based study of evidential 'variants' in Japanese

Review of Usage-based Approaches to Japanese Grammar: Toward the Understanding of Human Language by Kabata and Ono (2014) Available Now

A review of the above volume by our very own lab director Dr. Tsuyoshi Ono is now available for download on the Research Output page. Scroll to the bottom to find the PDF version.

Congratulations to our Graduate Student!

Our beloved Honoka Takei has successfully defended her thesis, soon to receive a Masters of Arts in Japanese Language and Literature. Her thesis is entitled:

An Investigation of Direct Object Coding System in Ikema dialect of Miyako

We send her our biggest congratulations and look forward to seeing where her work leads in the future!

Short Presentations on Chinese Linguistics by East Asian grad students:

Come learn about Chinese linguistic phenomenon from a few of the graduate students in the department! 

Gaisha Oralova

    Chinese Response Tokens

Kerry Sluchinski

    The Usage of Homophonic Graphemes in Chinese Social Media: Third-Person Pronoun ta

When: 3:00PM November 27, 2015

Where: Spoken Discourse Research Studio, Arts 501 (access via the south stairwell)

Talk by Linguistics Graduate student Yoichi Mukai: Rhythm of read and spontaneous speech in Japanese and English

Looking for something to motivate your studies over reading week? Come see Yoichi present research he has been working tirelessly at to stimulate your          

        studies and linguistic passions.

        As always, coffee and cookies will be available!

        All are welcome!

        When: November 12 at 4PM

        Where: ARTS 501

The 2nd Language Documentation Training in Miyako, Okinawa

Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, TUFS

Call for participants

We invite applications for participation in the 2nd Language Documentation Training Workshop in Miyako, Okinawa to be held in December 2015. This workshop series has been conducted by the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA). This workshop has been planned to provide training in language documentation in the local context. This is part of the effort to stimulate and support research on endangered languages spoken in Okinawa and also language documentation research in general. The workshop is designed for beginning researchers without much experience in working with Miyako and other Ryukyuan languages.

1. Dates: December 16 - 22, 2015

2. Program: The goal of this workshop is to provide an opportunity to gain hands-on experience in various aspects of language documentation research:

● Collection of data for basic linguistic analyses

● Collection of natural discourse data

● Analysis of basic linguistic structure

● Processing and management of linguistic data

Instructors: Toshihide Nakayama (ILCAA, TUFS) and Tsuyoshi Ono (U of Alberta)

3. Venue: Ikema Island, Miyakojima, Okinawa

4. Target participants: Advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students without fieldwork experience or knowledge of Miyako and other Ryukyuan languages. A good command of conversational Japanese is required.

5. Selection: Depending on the number of applicants, prior screening will be held based on the application form (see 8. below).

6. Number of participants: About 8 people will be selected from the applications.

7. Participation fee: There is no registration fee or tuition. However, participants are responsible for their transportation cost to Miyakojima and lodging and food costs. We will try to keep the lodging and food costs reasonable by making arrangements for shared lodging and self-cooking.

8. Application: Please apply by filling out the online application form at URL: http://bit.ly/1ADubMU

9. Deadline for applications: The application must arrive no later than 23:59pm, September 25, 2015 (in Japan Standard Time).

10. Notification of selection: We will notify applicants of the results in the first week of October 2015.

11. For further information, please contact:

Prof. Toshihide Nakayama Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS)

e-mail: nakayama [at] aa.tufs.ac.jp

Pre-announcement: short language documentation training on Miyako Island, Okinawa, Japan

We will be conducting a short fieldwork training workshop focusing on one of the Ryukyuan languages, Miyako, on Miyako Island, Okinawa, Japan. This workshop has been planned as part of  the Linguistic Dynamics Science Project (LingDy) at ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, to stimulate and support research in language documentation. Please note that the focus of this training workshop is on working with the community for the purpose of documenting endangered languages, not on data collection for linguistic theorization. The main target of the workshop is advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. Details will be announced soon, but we plan to cover the basics of working on an endangered language in the community where it is still spoken. People skills are strongly emphasized. If you are interested in participating in the workshop, pre-register at http://bit.ly/1hhg4KI so that we can inform you when the detailed application information becomes available. If you have questions, please direct thm to Toshihide Nakayama <nakayama@aa.tufs.ac.jp>.

Target participants: Advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students without fieldwork experience. We are aiming for 5 to 10 total participants. A good command of spoken Japanese is required.

Conducted by: Toshihide Nakayama (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) and Tsuyoshi Ono (University of Alberta)

Where: Miyakojima, Japan

When: 5-7 days between early December 2015 and early January 2016 (specific dates will be announced soon)

Fees: no registration fee; no tuition required

Cost: You are responsible for the transportation cost to Miyako Island, lodging and food costs. We will, however, try to keep the lodging and food costs reasonable by making arrangements for shared accomodation and self-catering.

The workshop held by Dr. Nakayama in Miyako this past December was a great success, bringing together graduates, undergraduates and professors from all around the globe to collaborate and gain valuable insights into the process of language documentation. 

From its beautiful beaches to its vast sugarcane fields, both the islands of Ikema and Miyako offered a glorious natural setting for this workshop to take place.

Thanks to our undergraduate participants we were able to enjoy a wide array of international foods, including authentic Japanese, Chinese, and Polish cuisine! Community members also taught us how to make a traditional pancake of the area, known as popo, which was filled with delicious handmade miso.  

We would like to thank the communities on Ikema and Miyako who volunteered much of their time and effort to help make this a success! This was a learning experience for us all. Thank you for sharing your culture, your generosity and your language. 

Helsinki Workshop and Symposium - The Questions of Units in Language and Interaction

Lab Director, Dr. Tsuyoshi Ono, has recently attended and presented at The Questions of Units in Language and Interaction workshop, held from September 8-12 in Helsinki, Finland. This was a joint project between the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science and the Academy of Finland.

Congratulations to our Graduate Student!

Our masters student, Peng Qiu, has just successfully defended her thesis in her Masters of Arts in Japanese Language and Literature. Her thesis is entitled:

    A Preliminary Investigation of Yilan Creole in Taiwan: Discussing predicate position in Yilan Creole

We send her our biggest congratulations and look forward to seeing where her work leads in this community over the years to come!

Upcoming Talk

UofA masters alumnus, Ross Krekoski, has generously offered to give a talk on his current research and the ins and outs of life as a graduate student in the field of linguistics. Below are the details of the talk, join us for this opportunity, (plus coffee and cookies!)

On formally undecidable 'fragments' of speech and other speech-like systems, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the incompleteness theorem

Thursday August 21, 3PM

ARTS 501

Slides for the talk can be found on the Events page

Just published!

Kabata, Kaori and Tsuyoshi Ono. eds. 2014. Usage-based approaches to Japanese grammar: Towards the understanding of human language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.