People

Introduction

Working within the framework of generative linguistics, I am interested in syntax — particularly syntactic theory and comparative syntax. I have been studying how general rules of structure building can explain various grammatical phenomena observed in individual languages and how they can capture cross-linguistic similarities and differences with the help of language-particular properties. In recent years, I have been focusing on the phenomenon of ellipsis in Japanese and other languages such as English, Turkish, Malayalam, Basque, Mandarin Chinese, Mongolian, Dagara, and Vietnamese, among others. I have found that constructions involving ellipsis in those languages exhibit similarities in general and yet differences in specific details. For example, so-called displacement — a phenomenon where an element in a sentence is “moved” to another position in the sentence, such as topicalization, wh-movement, and focalization — out of elliptic parts is allowed in some languages but heavily constrained in others. It is a fascinating puzzle how speakers of those languages come to “know” such differences despite the fact that elliptic parts of relevant sentences do not “tell” them much: elliptic parts are phrases in silence and hence show no visible or audible clue to whatever property they have. I especially welcome students who share in interest in such research and wish to work with them to solve mysteries syntax of human language exhibits.