Research Interests

• Ideophones (their syntax, semantics, semiotics/iconicity, phonosemantics, morphophonology, acquisition, typology) 

• Register-specific words

• Typology of motion expressions (esp. manner expressions)

• Personal names

• Psych-verbs

I'm particularly interested in linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to ideophones (aka mimetics, expressives, sound-symbolic words, onomatopoeia), which abound in many languages of the world. Japanese ideophones, for example, cover a wide range of meanings, from sounds (e.g., paripari 'crunching') to manners of motion (e.g., yotiyoti 'toddling') and psychological states (e.g., iraira 'irritated').

My current research interests include:

• Iconicity of voice quality

• Typology of sound-symbolic perception

• Multisensorial semantics of ideophones

• Construction morphology

And some specific topics I would like (you) to investigate in the future are summarized in the following document:

PDF (01/11/2023)

I am also a bibliographer. Please have a look at my bibliographies of sound-symbolic phenomena available on this website.