The Research Centre for Japanese Language and Linguistics was created in March 2009 within the Faculty of Oriental Studies to function as an umbrella for research activities related to Japanese language and linguistics through the University.

The Centre also serves as a forum for publicizing teaching, seminars, lectures, and other activities of interest to Japanese linguistics, and as a point of access to information for prospective graduate students interested in Japanese language and linguistics. The Centre welcomes academic visitors to the University who work within Japanese linguistics.

In addition to the Centre's membership of staff and graduate students from the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the new Faculty of Linguistics and our visiting scholars, the Centre also has a membership of external affiliates who have a connection with the Centre and its members, for example through joint research projects.

A major research project hosted within the Centre is the four-and-a-half year project, 'Verb semantics and argument realization in pre-modern Japanese', which is a collaborative effort involving researchers working in England, Japan, and the US. However, the research of the members of the Centre is wide-ranging, from acquisition of Japanese as a foreign language to reconstruction of proto-Japanese morphology.

Upcoming Talks

28 February 2012
Dr Elisabeth de Boer will present "The modern Japanese tone and accent systems" at the East Asian Linguistics Seminar from 5 pm in the Oriental Institute, Lecture Room 1. (abstract)

Recent Talks

21 February 2012
Professor Sven Osterkamp (Ruhr University Bochum) presented "Prenasalization in Japonic languages as seen in pre-modern foreign transcriptions: A look at the sources and their interpretation" at the East Asian Linguistics Seminar. (more)

7 February 2012
Professor Bjarke Frellesvig (Oxford) presented "On Modern Standard Japanese within the history of the Japanese language" at the East Asian Linguistics Seminar. (more)

1 February 2012
Professor Bjarke Frellesvig (Oxford) presented "The verb 'to do' (suru) in Old Japanese: A corpus based study" at the University of York. (more)

New Publication

The Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese is now available online. This full poetic corpus of Old Japanese presents the original script and a phonemic transcription of all Old Japanese poetic texts.

New Book

コーヒーブレイク
Join us for our weekly coffee and Japanese linguistics on Fridays at 11 during full term.

The East Asian Linguistics Seminar takes place in the Oriental Institute on Tuesdays from 5-6 during Hilary Term. (schedule)