Profile Information

Affiliation
Associate professor, Institute of Arts and Sciences, Kagurazaka Division, Institute of Arts and Sciences, Tokyo University of Science
Degree
PhD (Linguistics)(Hokkaido University)

Contact information
bugaevars.tus.ac.jp
J-GLOBAL ID
200901082956123075
researchmap Member ID
6000016673

External link

My research is aimed at preserving and increasing our precious knowledge about Ainu, the only non-Japonic language of Japan, which is now on the verge of extinction. The genetic affiliation of Ainu is unknown; at present it is classified as a language isolate. Ainu is presumably a remnant of some very old language family and very likely a legacy of earlier cultures in the Japanese archipelago.

The foundation of my work on Ainu rests on the research and guidance of the foremost specialists in Japan, in particular my postdoctoral host researcher Prof. Hiroshi Nakagawa and my PhD supervisor Prof. Tomomi Satoo, who introduced me to actual Ainu fieldwork. Japanese researchers engaged in the extensive language documentation of Ainu fifty years before language documentation emerged as a separate field in the West.

As a Ph.D student I conducted extensive fieldwork with one of the last speakers of an undescribed Chitose dialect of Ainu, transcribed texts and wrote an outline grammar. Since then I have been comparing Ainu grammatical structures with those of other world’s languages in order to increase the rigor and clarity of our understanding of Ainu syntax, and to set it in the perspective that linguistic typology provides for analyzing the extremely varied languages of the world. My goal is to open up the great significance of Ainu to linguistics by laying out the many rare or unique features that its grammar exhibits.

My recent research focuses on grammatical change in Ainu induced by contact with Japanese, an issue which has not been addressed in previous research. Notwithstanding the profound structural dissimilarities between Ainu and Japanese, there remains a striking residue of similarities between the two languages, extending to intertranslability of some analytic grammatical constructions. These facts are suggestive of convergence under contact.

Papers

  46

Misc.

  24

Books and Other Publications

  17

Presentations

  101

Teaching Experience

  20

Research Projects

  14