Japanese Linguistics

This course serves as an introduction to the field of Japanese linguistics, covering a wide range of linguistic topics of the language from phonetics and phonology through to syntax and pragmatics. Various linguistic data of the language will be presented in the course in order for students to understand the unique linguistic properties of Japanese, and also to examine how they are linguistically accounted for. The students will learn how to carry out a literature review in linguistics and be critical towards previous studies. This course consolidates and advances students' understanding of the principles of language analysis and linguistic theory based on the data from Japanese language. This course will also provide a conceptual structure which will complement the learning of the language. Students are expected to demonstrate that they can appropriately apply their acquired skills and knowledge to actual linguistic data for their own original research, and then that they can provide an in-depth analysis of the data.