Applied Linguistics Special Research A

LecturerTomoki OKUDA, Associate Professor
DepartmentGraduate School of Languages and Cultures, 2014 Spring
Recommended for:Graduate Students (21.5 hours / session One session / week 15 weeks / semester)

Course Overview

This class will take a seminar style by consistently using recent papers as material. Students will have to prepare answers to questions about the paper chosen by the instructor, present and actively discuss the answers with others during the seminar. The analytical skills to critically read articles and using the discovery of problematic points in previous research as a starting point, will cultivate the ability to implement ties to studies and new research theme.

Key Features

In this course, we will deal with topics that are often discussed in Japanese linguistics and are often chosen by graduate students for their research. This practicum style course will consistently use new and fresh articles as teaching material. For this course, first, the lecturer will assign questions about problematic issues in the selected paper, and the questions will be sent to students 1 week in advance by email. Students will email the answers by the day before class, and we will discuss the answers in class.

By preparing answers to the questions before class, this creates an environment where students are able to state their ideas willingly. In addition, when faced with complicated problems, students can immediately begin deep discussions and use our time efficiently where they already have organized their thoughts.

Even in the most sophisticated articles, you will find some "weak points " when you read them carefully several times. It takes a lot of hard work to criticize correctly and connect your arguments to an article. The "Painful " process that everyone experiences when writing papers, through this class, I would like all students to experience this vicariously.

Course Aims

We will explore possibilities to approach the analysis of adverbs in Japanese Language by revealing there functional properties and seeking out for whether problems exist based on previous research.

Course Overview

In this semester, we will be focusing on declarative adverbs and adverbs of degree that modify nouns. The main topics are as follows, but these will be flexible upon request.

  1. instability of adverbs as parts of speech
  2. usage of adverbs in theories of grammar
  3. classification of adverbs
  4. what a predicative adverb is
  5. problems concerning the agreement of adverbs with verbs
  6. adverbs as related to rules of aspect
  7. how rules of modality relate to adverbs of degree that modify nouns

Last updated

December 22, 2015