Position:

Professor of Japanese Linguistics; Fellow of Hertford College

Faculty / College Address:

Oriental Institute / Hertford College

Email:

bjarke.frellesvig@orinst.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

• Japanese linguistics
• Japanese-Korean comparative linguistics
• Historical linguistics
• Language change theory
• Phonology

Current Projects:

• Reconstruction of proto-Japanese phonology and morphology (together with John Whitman, Cornell University)
• Verb semantics and argument realization in pre-modern Japanese: A comprehensive study of the basic syntax of pre-modern Japanese

Courses Taught:

• Old Japanese
• Classical Japanese
• Japanese grammar
• History and structure of Japanese
• Japanese linguistics

Recent Publications:

• 2011. (with John Whitman). “Prenominal Complementizers and the Derivation of Complex NPs in Japanese and Korean”. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 18, pp. 73-87.
• 2010. (with Stephen Horn, Kerri Russell and Peter Sells). “Verb Semantics and Argument Realization in Pre-Modern Japanese: A Preliminary study of Compound Verbs in Old Japanese”. Gengo Kenkyū 138:25-65.
• 2010. A history of the Japanese language. Cambridge University Press
• 2009. The Old Japanese case system: The function of wo (with Janick Wrona). Japanese/Korean Linguistics 17, pp. 565-79. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
• 2008a. Proto-Japanese (edited, with John Whitman). John Benjamins.
• 2008b. On reconstruction of proto-Japanese and pre-Old Japanese verb inflection. In Frellesvig and Whitman (2008a), pp. 179-98.
• 2008c. Evidence for seven vowels in proto-Japanese (with John Whitman). In Frellesvig and Whitman (2008a), pp. 15-42.
• 2008d. Introduction (with John Whitman). In Frellesvig and Whitman (2008a), pp. 1-12.
• 2008e. (with John Whitman). The Japanese/Korean vowel correspondences. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 13, pp. 15-28. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
• 2007a. with Masayoshi Shibatani and John Charles Smith (eds.). Current Issues in the History and Structure of Japanese. Kurosio Publishers.
• 2007b. On the verb morphology of Old Japanese. In Frellesvig, Shibatani, Smith 2007a, pp. 219-252.
• 2006. The haunted log-palace: a new interpretation of a passage in the /Hôjôki/. Studies in Chinese language and culture: festschrift in honour of Christoph Harbsmeier on the occasion of his 60th birthday, ed. by Christoph Anderl and Halvor Eifring, 107-20. Oslo: Hermes Academic Publishing. Available at The Norwegian Institute of Palaeography and Historical Philology website
• 2005. The Verb Morphology of Old Japanese [summary]. Nanzan Linguistics 2, 106-13
• 2004. (with John Whitman). The Vowels of Proto-Japanese. Japanese Language and Literature 38/2, 281-99
• 2001. A common Korean and Japanese copula. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 10/1, 1-35.
• 2000. Recent Changes in the Tonology of Kyoto Japanese. Historical Linguistics 1995, Volume 1: General issues and non-Germanic Languages. Selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995 (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 161), ed. by John Charles Smith and Delia Bentley, 111-124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• 1999. The Prosodic Shape of -mono Derivatives in Kyoto Japanese. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 31, 91-124.
• 1998. A common Korean and Japanese noun particle: Korean ulo :: Japanese to. Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on Korean Linguistics - July 6-9, 1998, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, ed. by Byung-Soo Park, James Hye Suk Yoon, 336-45. Seoul.
• 1998. Accent, Word Tone and Metatony in Central Japanese. On'in Kenkyuu / Phonological Studies (published by the Phonological Society of Japan) 1, 195-202.
• 1997. with R. Starrs (eds.). Japan and Korea: Contemporary Studies. Proceedings of the Fourth Nordic Symposium on Japanese And Korean Studies. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
• 1996. On the Interpretation of Written Sources as Evidence for the Phonology of Earlier Language Stages - with special regard to the reconstruction of early Old Japanese. Copenhagen Working Papers in Linguistics 3, 97-131.
• 1996. with C.M. Hermansen (eds.). Florilegium Japonicum. Studies Presented to Olof G. Lidin on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.
• 1995. A Case Study in Diachronic Phonology: the Japanese Onbin Sound Changes. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
• 1995. A Cultured Encounter: Dr Thunberg meets Mr Matsuhiro. Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West, ed. by S'ren Clausen, Roy Starrs, Anne Weddell-Wedellsborg, 109-25. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.