In the studies of language revival and revitalization, gaining and reproducing native speakers have often been regarded as crucial. In reality, however, in many cases it has become clear that it is difficult to maintain a community of native speakers in a given territory. So, attempts are made to transmit the language in other ways than through use at home by parents and in the immediate neighborhood. This research project focuses on such tendencies to seek alternatives or compensations to the ‘core-stage’ of language revival. Through comparing different types of minority language, this joint research seeks to get deeper insights not only into prospects of reversing language shift, but also into the various possibilities of the existence of languages in the society.
Concretely, the type of speakers called ‘new speakers’ or ‘post-vernacular’ type of language existence, languages as local or regional resources also for non-speakers of the concerned languages are topics to be examined. The languages studied in this project include European languages as Basque, Cornish, Francoprovençal and Sorbian, as well as Aynu in Japan and indigenous languages in the Andean Countries in Latin America.
Some second language (L2) pedagogical approaches acknowledge critical thinking (CT) as an important ability to be developed. For example, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) stress its importance and regard CT as an essential component. However, assessing L2 learners’ CT is challenging because the definition of CT is wide and entails a large variety of subskills (Paul & Elder, 2014).
The present study aims to identify the subskills that are important and feasible to measure in the assessment of essays written by L2 learners. We will use 30 argumentative essays submitted by university students who attended CLIL courses. First, five experienced practitioner researchers of CT in academic writing will be asked to evaluate the students’ CT skills through their argumentative essays. They will evaluate students’ CT skills as they normally do in their courses without given any pre-existing rating criteria and rubrics. While evaluating, they will verbalize their thinking process and audio record their think-aloud protocols. Then, we will develop a rubric based on Paul and Elder’s (2014) nine fundamental intellectual standards for assessing reasoning (also based on a rubric developed by Yanning (2017)) and ask three English instructors to evaluate the same argumentative essays by using it. The important subskills will be identified by analyzing the think-aloud protocols and calculating the correlations between ratings awarded by the CT researchers and English instructors. The reliability of the ratings indicates the degree to which each subskill is possible to measure. Finally, we aim to develop a rubric to measure university students’ CT skills.
The budget will be used for honorariums to the participants in the study.
This research project is concerned with universal and diverging (‘parametric’) properties of human language syntax, from different, though fundamentally related, points of view, including straight syntax and comparative syntax, lexical syntax/semantics, the brain science of language, mathematical and formal studies, evolutionary linguistics, etc.
One of the major discoveries of modern theoretical linguistics is that humans are endowed with a species-specific biological property, called the “faculty of language,” which enables them to acquire a specific formal computational system (human language) – but not other symbolic systems – that allows for generation of unbounded arrays of hierarchical structures (linguistic expressions) linking sounds – or signs, as in the case of sign languages – and meanings. The scientific study of this biological capacity constitutes a major part of contemporary linguistics, and the object of inquiry so defined calls for truly cross- and trans-disciplinary studies. As the evidence compellingly shows, the faculty of language is species-specific, and uniform across the species, i.e., it is a universal capacity for all humans. Thus, syntax, the main computational component of this capacity, has universal properties. What are the universal properties of human language syntax? This is the fundamental research question addressed in this project. On the other hand, rather surprisingly, various manifestations of human language (English, Japanese, German, Tongan, etc.) do exhibit certain degrees of variation. If the faculty of language is truly a universal biological property, as has been convincingly shown in the technical literature, where does the variation come from? Why is it that there seem to be various languages in the world? This is the second important problem we investigate in this project.
We started this project in 2012 and continued in the following years until 2020. In these years, we have investigated in detail various empirical and theoretical issues such as negation in Japanese, English, and other languages, the relation between syntax and the lexicon in German, Japanese, etc., the nature of the fundamental operation Merge and its manifestations in the brain, the evolution of language from the point of ethology, and so on. In 2021, we will continue to explore and develop analyses and theories pertinent to these issues, trying to unify some of the results accumulated in the past years.
The purpose of the proposed project is to explore the relationship between learning strategies students employ, their learning styles and their undergraduate majors. Given the purpose, the study is intended to test the validity of the hypothesis that there is a significant relationship between three factors. The data will be collected by administering a set of inventories to the undergraduate students of various majors, learning various foreign languages, including German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian, amongst others. The data will be statistically analyzed, and the results will be interpreted in the framework of CLIL with the focus on three basic elements comprising language, cognitive skills (i.e., language learning strategies) and topical knowledge (i.e., majors). Based on the outcome that has been obtained so far, self-taught materials will be developed to help those students majoring in applied and theoretical linguistics to achieve academic success in the field.
Second language acquisition research has mostly been conducted in European languages, in particular in English. However, empirical studies in Japanese from the viewpoint of cognition are still scarce. Second language acquisition is an intricate process in which external factors (learning environment, teaching methods) interact with internal factors (learners’ characteristics) and the nature of grammatical forms (developmental stages, grammatical difficulty etc.). These factors also interact with learners’ cognitive mechanisms, which could further implicate brain mechanisms. This study aims to explore these complex processes and mechanisms, by collecting data from learners of Japanese as a second language.
The current social situation makes it difficult to collect new data from learners of Japanese, due to problems such as the decline of foreign students coming to Japan in number, the difficulty with face-to-face data collection. Thus, in 2021, we will investigate the following topics by utilizing unanalyzed data previously collected and learners’ corpus available online.
1) By using the Japanese learners’ corpus (I-JAS) constructed by the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, oral utterances related to grammar development will be extracted, and statistically analyzed to explore the developmental stages in Japanese learners, which is supposedly universal based on Processability Theory.
2) Based on data from Mongolian learners of Japanese, the relationship between phonological short-term memory measured by non-word repetition tests and language development over eight months will be examined. Phonological short-term memory could affect acquisition of vocabulary and grammar, in particular at an early stage of learning.
3) Motivation in advanced learners of Japanese will be explored. Quantitative data from questionnaires on motivation and self-evaluation of language proficiency will be analyzed together with qualitative data from interviews. This analysis could illuminate what factors could contribute to motivation and motivated behaviors.
With the progress of information technology, corpus linguistics has developed greatly, and is currently making a significant contribution in the fields of discourse analysis and grammatical studies. The goal of this research project is to investigate how corpus studies can bring a deeper understanding of discourse markers in French.
The main corpora used for this study are Frantext, developed by ATILF (Analyse et traitement Informatique de la Langue Française), and the text corpus of “Le Monde” provided by ELRA (European Language Resources Association). Frantext consists of texts of various genres ranging over several centuries, whereas the “Le Monde” provides a more homogeneous corpus of contemporary standard written French. The research will rely mainly on a quantitative analysis of large corpora, but using two different types of corpora makes it possible to use various approaches.
Traditional approaches based on methods such as commutation tests often fail to provide a clear distinction between similar markers. One of the main results that can be expected from a quantitative study of such markers in large corpora is to show the tendencies in the syntactic or discursive environment in which they appear and in the cooccurrences with other words, in order to bring out their differences and better understand their characteristics.
Building upon the results already obtained in 2019 and 2020, we will expand in 2021 our corpus of “Le Monde” and further develop our analyses.
This collaborative research project builds upon a three-year SOLIFIC project conducted from 2009 to 2011that focused on the theory of interlinguistics, namely the choice of different linguistic resources in contexts where speakers do not share the same first language. Specifically, we looked at the use of code-switching in multilingual contexts, mixed languages, such as pidgins and creoles, planned languages, such as Esperanto, and hegemonic languages, such as English. The findings of this project were published in Sophia Linguistica No. 60 (2012).
However apart from comparing different types of interlingual communication, it is also important to consider how interlinguistic strategies may be applied differently depending on the language(s) used and the specific social context. To this aim, since 2012 we have been comparing the use of English, French, German, Portuguese and Japanese as lingua francas, with particular attention given to the characteristics, possibilities and specific issues relating to the use of each language as an interlinguistic resource. Our primary goals are to investigate the similarities and differences between each interlinguistic strategy beyond the individual language and also to determine how lingua franca communication is different from communication between native and non-native speakers. In 2020, we will continue to compare the findings concerning each languages in order to get translingual perspectives.
This research project is concerned with universal and diverging (‘parametric’) properties of human language syntax, from different, though fundamentally related, points of view, including straight syntax and comparative syntax, lexical syntax/semantics, the brain science of language, mathematical and formal studies, evolutionary linguistics, etc.
One of the major discoveries of modern theoretical linguistics is that humans are endowed with a species-specific biological property, called the “faculty of language,” which enables them to acquire a specific formal computational system (human language) – but not other symbolic systems – that allows for generation of unbounded arrays of hierarchical structures (linguistic expressions) linking sounds – or signs, as in the case of sign languages – and meanings. The scientific study of this biological capacity constitutes a major part of contemporary linguistics, and the object of inquiry so defined calls for truly cross- and trans-disciplinary studies. As the evidence compellingly shows, the faculty of language is species-specific, and uniform across the species, i.e., it is a universal capacity for all humans. Thus, syntax, the main computational component of this capacity, has universal properties. What are the universal properties of human language syntax? This is the fundamental research question addressed in this project. On the other hand, rather surprisingly, various manifestations of human language (English, Japanese, German, Swahili, Tongan, etc.) do exhibit certain degrees of variation. If the faculty of language is truly a universal biological property, as has been convincingly shown in the technical literature, where does the variation come from? Why is it that there seem to be various languages in the world? This is the second important problem we investigate in this project.
We started this project in 2012 and continued in the following years until 2019. In these years, we have investigated in detail various empirical and theoretical issues such as negation in Japanese, English, and other languages, the relation between syntax and the lexicon in German, Japanese, etc., the nature of the fundamental operation Merge and its manifestations in the brain, the evolution of language from the point of ethology, and so on. In 2020, we will continue to explore and develop analyses and theories pertinent to these issues, trying to unify some of the results accumulated in the past years.
The purpose of the proposed project is to explore the relationship between learning strategies students employ, their learning styles and their undergraduate majors. Given the purpose, the study is intended to test the validity of the hypothesis that there is a significant relationship between three factors. The data will be collected by administering a set of inventories to the undergraduate students of various majors, learning various foreign languages, including German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian, amongst others. The data will be statistically analyzed, and the results will be interpreted in the framework of CLIL with the focus on three basic elements comprising language, cognitive skills (i.e., language learning strategies) and topical knowledge (i.e., majors). Based on the outcome that has been obtained so far, self-taught materials will be developed to help those students majoring in applied and theoretical linguistics to achieve academic success in the field.
Second language acquisition is an intricate process in which external factors (learning environment, teaching methods) interact with internal factors (learners’ characteristics) and the nature of grammatical forms (developmental stages, grammatical difficulty etc.). These factors also interact with learners’ cognitive mechanisms, which could further implicate brain mechanisms. This study aims to explore these complex processes and mechanisms, by collecting data from learners of Japanese as a second language.
In 2020, we will continue to examine the effects of CLIL on learning of Japanese. At the Center for Language Education and Research at Sophia University, the Japanese language program has recently adopted CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). In our pilot study conducted in 2019, we collected data such as results of ACTFL-OPI (oral proficiency test) and J-CAT (web-based Japanese proficiency test) from non-degree Chinese students. We will further analyze data by comparing with students who had enrolled prior to the introduction of CLIL. In addition, based on the results of the pilot study, we will expand research to investigate the effects of CLIL in academic Japanese courses for degree students.
Furthermore, we will continue to present outcomes of the collaborative research conducted with members of the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer (IDAC) of Tohoku University. A paper based on L1 data was presented at an international conference in 2018, and that on L2 data, in 2019. By employing unanalyzed data on learners’ proficiency and individual differences (namely, working memory capacity), we aim to present and write papers.
In addition, data on the relationship between learners’ individual differences such as motivation and language aptitude, and proficiency in Japanese will be accumulated.
With the progress of information technology, corpus linguistics has developed greatly, and is currently making a significant contribution in the fields of discourse analysis and grammatical studies. The goal of this research project is to investigate how corpus studies can bring a deeper understanding of discourse markers in French.
The main corpora used for this study are Frantext, developed by ATILF (Analyse et traitement Informatique de la Langue Française), and the text corpus of “Le Monde” provided by ELRA (European Language Resources Association). Frantext consists of texts of various genres ranging over several centuries, whereas the “Le Monde” provides a more homogeneous corpus of contemporary standard written French. The research will rely mainly on a quantitative analysis of large corpora, but using two different types of corpora makes it possible to use various approaches.
Traditional approaches based on methods such as commutation tests often fail to provide a clear distinction between similar markers. One of the main results that can be expected from a quantitative study of such markers in large corpora is to show the tendencies in the syntactic or discursive environment in which they appear and in the cooccurrences with other words, in order to bring out their differences and better understand their characteristics.
Building upon the results already obtained in 2019, we will expand in 2020 our corpus of “Le Monde” and further develop our analyses.
The present study will examine the change in productive skills in English (speaking and writing skills) focusing on university students who took English for academic purposes (EAP) courses at Sophia University.
The results of this study will be used to reveal the contribution of EAP and content and language integrated learning (CLIL) courses to the improvement of productive skills by comparing with the results of Sato and Hemmi’s study conducted in 2018. In the 2018 study, we investigated the change in English productive skills of attendees of CLIL courses at Sophia University, showing that their skills after taking one-semester CLIL classes were significantly higher than those before taking the classes. (A small-scale study done by Sato and Hemmi (2018) showed similar results.) However, it was not possible to attribute this result to CLIL itself because the study employed a pre-experimental research design, where there was no comparison group to demonstrate the cause and effect relationship. Therefore, it was necessary to conduct a similar study with attendees of EAP courses to confirm if the changes in productive skills are relevant to the type of English courses that students take.
We have already obtained speaking and writing performance data from approximately 200 university students, who took the same productive skills tests in the second and 27th classes in Academic Communication 1 (28 EAP classes) offered in Spring Semester 2019. We will select 70 students’ performance data (140 speeches and essays, respectively), ask five International English Language Testing System (IELTS) examiners to rate the performances, and examine the change in the skills throughout the semester. The budget will be used for honorariums to the IELTS examiners.
We aim to publish the results focusing on “The Contribution of CLIL to University Students’ Productive Skills Development.”
This collaborative research project builds upon a three-year SOLIFIC project conducted from 2009 to 2011that focused on the theory of interlinguistics, namely the choice of different linguistic resources in contexts where speakers do not share the same first language. Specifically, we looked at the use of code-switching in multilingual contexts, mixed languages, such as pidgins and creoles, planned languages, such as Esperanto, and hegemonic languages, such as English. The findings of this project were published in Sophia Linguistica No. 60 (2012).
However apart from comparing different types of interlingual communication, it is also important to consider how interlinguistic strategies may be applied differently depending on the language(s) used and the specific social context. To this aim, since 2012 we have been comparing the use of English, French, German, Portuguese and Japanese as lingua francas, with particular attention given to the characteristics, possibilities and specific issues relating to the use of each language as an interlinguistic resource. Our primary goals are to investigate the similarities and differences between each interlinguistic strategy beyond the individual language and also to determine how lingua franca communication is different from communication between native and non-native speakers. In the 2017 academic year, the main aim was to publish the results of the symposium held in 2015. In 2018, we will try to summarize the findings of the past years.
This research project is concerned with universal and diverging (‘parametric’) properties of human language syntax, from a number of different, though fundamentally related, points of view, including straight syntax and comparative syntax, lexical syntax/semantics, the brain science of language, mathematical and formal studies, evolutionary linguistics, etc.
One of the major discoveries of modern theoretical linguistics is that humans are endowed with a species-specific biological property, called the “faculty of language,” which enables them to acquire a specific formal computational system (human language) – but not other symbolic systems – that allows for generation of unbounded arrays of hierarchical structures (linguistic expressions) linking sounds – or signs, as in the case of sign languages – and meanings. The scientific study of this biological capacity constitutes a major part of contemporary linguistics, and the object of inquiry so defined calls for truly cross- and trans-disciplinary studies. As the evidence compellingly shows, the faculty of language is species-specific, and also uniform across the species, i.e., it is a universal capacity for all humans. Thus, syntax, the main computational component of this capacity, has universal properties. What are the universal properties of human language syntax? This is the fundamental research question addressed in this project. On the other hand, rather surprisingly, various manifestations of human language (English, Japanese, German, Swahili, Tongan, etc.) do exhibit certain degrees of variation. If the faculty of language is truly a universal biological property, as has been convincingly shown in the technical literature, where does the variation come from? Why is it that there seem to be various different languages in the world? This is the second important problem we investigate in this project.
We started this project in 2012 and continued on in the following years until 2017. In these years, we have investigated in detail various empirical and theoretical issues such as negation in Japanese, English, and other languages, the relation between syntax and the lexicon in German, Japanese, etc., the nature of the fundamental operation Merge and its manifestations in the brain, the evolution of language from the point of ethology, and so on. In 2018, we will continue to explore and develop analyses and theories pertinent to these issues, and will try to unify some of the results accumulated in the past years.
The purpose of the proposed project is to explore the relationship between learning strategies students employ, their learning styles and their undergraduate majors. Given the purpose, the study is intended to test the validity of the hypothesis that there is a significant relationship between three factors. The data will be collected by administering a set of inventories to the undergraduate students of various majors, learning various foreign languages, including German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian, amongst others. The data will be statistically analyzed, and the results will be interpreted in the framework of CLIL with the focus on three basic elements comprising language, cognitive skills (i.e., language learning strategies) and topical knowledge (i.e., majors). Based on the outcome that has been obtained so far, self-taught materials will be developed to help those students majoring in applied and theoretical linguistics to achieve academic success in the field.
Second language acquisition is an intricate process in which external factors (learning environment, teaching methods) interact with internal factors (learners’ characteristics) and the nature of grammatical forms (developmental stages, difficulty etc.). These factors also interact with learners’ cognitive mechanisms that could lead to brain mechanisms. This study aims to explore these complex processes and mechanisms, by collecting data from learners of Japanese as a second language.
Since the year 2-16, a collaborative research with members of the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer (IDAC) of Tohoku University has been conducted. The purpose of this project is to explore how input processing skills will develop as proficiency levels increase from the neurocognitive perspective by examining how learners’ proficiency levels and language aptitude (namely, working memory capacity) will affect brain activities during sentence processing. In the year 2017, neural and behavioral data were collected from Chinese learners of Japanese, using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). In the year 2018, the IDAC team will mainly analyze neural imaging data, and the Sophia team, behavioral data. Then, both teams will jointly discuss the relationship between brain activities and learners’ proficiency levels and individual differences in input processing.
The present research project is a developed version of the project in the previous year: “Basic research and development for innovative educational methods in phonetics applying advanced information technology”. We continue our research on the basic science and development of various web servers and cloud servers for research and education of phonetics.
Currently, a small-scale web server is running in Prof. Kitahara’s office for a contents management system (CMS) used for all classes taught by Prof. Kitahara. The merit of an independent CMS compared to Moodle and Loyola provided by Sophia University is that it is light-weight and editable in an on-going classroom activities. In addition, it is easy to customize the system for a flexible application. For instance, the comment function of the CMS is available for any cell phones in class so that students can share the discussion of a given topic promptly and visually. Students can also review the discussion after the class.
Meanwhile, main resources of the phonetics lab as well as BA, MA, and PhD theses advising are conducted on a similar CMS on a commercial server. There is no running web server open to public in the phonetics lab. This is due to recent increasing security risks against the safe management of private servers without any full-time technical staff.
Therefore, we have changed the main focus of our research from the research plan in the previous year: the main research and CMS web-servers will be implemented on a commercial server and local servers are managed for small-scale pilot services. Contents of the services will also be a main topic of the research. Particularly, we aim to construct a digital studio for higher-resolution graphics and multimedia data for a production and editing of sound and movie files for phonetic education. Equipment and know-hows for such contents are rapidly developing year by year, so that we have to keep learning new approaches. The goal is to develop an easy-to-use web-based phonetic experiment/feedback system in order to collect a large amount of data swiftly. This will lead to various applications in language teaching, such as hands-on phonetic tasks and pronunciation/listening training systems.
In addition, studies of large scale corpora and sound database have been flourishing in recent phonology/phonetics area. Our phonetics lab aims to apply the technic and the results of such studies in practical educational situations to develop versatile and robust speaking/listening skills. To achieve this goal, a local server in the lab will be used to manage resources in a centralized and efficient way and multiple terminals in the lab can work together for a collaborative research projects.
