Research
My research interests lie in the dynamics of language variation: how it contributes to diachronic change in grammar, and how it functions as a means to reflect and construct the identity and ideology of a speaker.
Much of my work has focused on syntactic variation with respect to i) whether it reflects an ongoing linguistic change in grammar, and ii) the extent to which linguistic and other factors influence its perception and use, as well as the extent to which they may have contributed to propelling the observed linguistic change. I have employed quantitative approaches, including corpus-based and questionnaire surveys, as well as psycholinguistic experiments.
Besides the above projects, I have recently been engaged in sociolinguistic projects on 1) linguistic landscape, aiming to identify the functions of language on signage in relation to immigrants' identities and ideologies in Japan, and 2) character language ("role language") used in fiction and translation to understand the mechanism of how such speech styles and their social meanings have been developed in relation to real-life language ideologies, viewing it as a case of language variation with reference to the sociolinguistic concept "enregisterment".
Research Areas
sociolinguistics, syntax
Current Research Projects
Linguistic Landscape
Linguistic landscape and Japanese-Brazilian communities in Japan [published in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development]
Immigrant communities in Tokyo, A comparison between Koreatown and Islamic Street (with Mitsuko Ono) [published in International Journal of Multilingualism]
Immigrant communities x prohibition signs and signage in schoolscape in Japan [published in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development]
English usage in Linguistic Landscape of Tokyo [published in English Today]
A comparison between Chinatown and Koreatown in Japan [manuscript in preparation]
Speech acts and politeness of languages on signs (with Xiaofang Yao) [presented at British Association for Applied Linguistics 2021 Conference]
Character language ("role language") in fiction and translation
Enregisterment of character language and change in language ideology: Comparing three Japanese translated texts of Gone with the Wind (with Haydn Trowell) [published in Journal of Japanese Linguistics (De Gruyter)]
Production experiment to identify the shared knowledge of enregistered character language in fiction (with Haydn Trowell) [manuscript in preparation]
Japanese Grammar
'teiru' vs. 'teru' variation in Japanese ("i-nuki kotoba / i-deletion) [manuscript in preparation]
A change in zero copula in Japanese ("da-nuki kotoba") [published in Language Sciences]
Language change in object markers in Japanese [published in Journal of Japanese Linguistics] (with David Y. Oshima, Shin-ichiro Sano)
Processing aspect of subject-marker variation in Japanese (with Kentaro Nakatani) [published in Glossa]
Autism Spectrum Disorder and the use of sentence-final particles (discourse particles) in Japanese (in collaboration with the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities) [presented at the annual meeting of the Japanese Association of Sociolinguistic Sciences in 2022]
Previous Projects
Prosodic focus in telephone numbers in Tokyo Japanese [published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Data in Brief (Elsevier)] (with Yong-cheol Lee and Sunghye Cho)
Language change in subject markers in Japanese [published in Linguistics (De Gruyter) and Gengo Kenkyu]
Information structure and object markers in Japanese [published in Journal of East Asian Linguistics (Springer)] (with Hyun Kyung Hwang, David Y. Oshima, Masashi Nomura)
Neuroimaging of processing the subject-marker variation in Japanese (with Toshiki Iwabuchi, Kentaro Nakatani, Michiru Makuuchi) [published in Issues in Japanese Psycholinguistics from Comparative Perspectives (De Gruyter)]
Modeling word orders in the double object constructions in Japanese [presented at 2018 Association for Computational Linguistics workshop] (with Masayuki Asahara, Shin-ichiro Sano)
Prosodic aspects of Focus on 'always' and 'only' in Korean and Japanese (with Yong-cheol Lee)
Language change in velar nasal in Japanese [published in NINJAL research papers (NINJAL, Tokyo)]
Processing aspects of aspectual coercion in Japanese (with Hajime Ono, Mei Yoshimoto)
Prosodic aspects of the pre-verbal position in Japanese [presented at WAFL] (with Yoshihisa Kitagawa, Shin-ichiro Ishihara, Hajime Ono)
Methods
Corpora
Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ)
Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese (BCCWJ)
Minutes of Japanese Diet
Okada Collection
Corpus of Historical Japanese (CHJ)
Corpus of Everyday Japanese Conversations (CEJC)
Tools
R
PsyochoPy
Ibex farm
Linger (with Kentaro Nakatani at Konan University and Hajime Ono at Tsuda University)
Praat
Research Grants
2020, Japan Foundation, Japanese Studies Fellowship ("Investigating language variation and change: Language use of various social groups in Japan.", 935,000JPY)
2015-2017, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKEN #15J00283, JSPS Post-doctoral fellows, 600,000 JPY)
2014-2017, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKEN #26770155, "Research on Nominative-Genitive Alternation in Japanese", 3,640,000 JPY)
2014-2017, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKEN #26580081, "Research on Nominative-Genitive Alternation in Japanese", 3,250,000 JPY)
University internal grants
2023, Monash University, Faculty of Arts, LLCL, Seed Scheme
2023, Monash University, Assistive Technology & Society Seed grant for tactile Auslan project
2021, Monash University, Faculty of Arts, LLCL, Seed Scheme
2019, Monash University, Faculty of Arts, LLCL, Seed Scheme
2018, Monash University, Faculty of Arts, LLCL, grant for research on language teaching
2017-2018, Monash University, Faculty of Arts, New Appointees Scheme