Research

I work at the intersection of theoretical linguistics (syntax) and psycholinguistics (sentence processing). The primary goal of my research is to understand how the human sentence processing system (the parser) processes sentences in real time. To this end, I investigate three closely related research questions.

What kinds of structures does the parser need to build?
How does the parser incrementally build those structures?
How do extra-linguistic systems/factors constrain structure-building during comprehension?

I address these questions through three broad research strands.

① Grammatical theory

I study clause structure, primarily in Japanese, and occasionally in other languages such as English and Korean. Representative constructions that I have worked on include resultatives, causatives, passives, unaccusatives, and double objects. Close examination of these constructions reveals how argument structure and event structure are represented in syntactic structure.

Relevant works:

Asami, Daiki and Benjamin Bruening. (to appear) “Arguments for a Lexical Ambiguity Approach to Restitutive Readings with Again”, Linguistic Inquiry (LI). (Manuscript link)
Asami, Daiki (2026) Resultatives in Japanese: Grammar and Processing, PhD dissertation, University of Delaware (Link).
Asami, Daiki and Benjamin Bruening. (2025) “Subjectless Readings of Again: A Response to Bale (2007) and Smith and Yu (2021)”, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (NLLT), 43 (3), 1813–1837.
Asami, Daiki. (2025) ‘‘Passive Head only Selects for Agentive Voice in Japanese: A Reply to Jo and Seo (2023)’’, Journal of East Asian Linguistics (JEAL), 34, 205–240.
Asami, Daiki. (2024) “Deriving and Processing Experiencer Subject Causatives”, Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 9 (1), 1–57.

② Online structure building

I investigate how the parser builds syntactic structure in real time. In earlier work, I examined whether the complexity of grammatical structures (e.g., the number of dependencies) predicts online processing costs (e.g., reading times), and whether processing data can distinguish between competing grammatical hypotheses. More recently, I have shifted my focus toward the phrase-by-phrase processes that the parser carries out during comprehension. I am especially interested in cases where the syntactic complexity does not straightforwardly predict processing difficulty, since such cases may provide novel clues as to how the parser behaves during real-time comprehension.

Relevant works:

Asami, Daiki (2026) Resultatives in Japanese: Grammar and Processing, PhD dissertation, University of Delaware (Link).
Asami, Daiki and Satoshi Tomioka. (2026) “Psycholinguistic Evidence for the Optional Movement of Unaccusative Subjects in Japanese”, Syntactic Theory and Research (STAR), 1 (1), 1–32.
Asami, Daiki and Satoshi Tomioka. (2025) “Online Processing of Subject-initial Non-Canonical Sentences: Interaction of Syntax with Information Structure”, Glossa Psycholinguistics, 4 (1), 1–39.
Asami, Daiki. (2024) “Deriving and Processing Experiencer Subject Causatives”, Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 9 (1), 1–57.

③ Relations between extra-linguistic systems/factors and structure building

This line of research is currently under development. I hope to share more information soon.

Page updated

Report abuse