Research website for KAZUKO MATSUMOTO

日本語

Research

PALAUAN JAPANESE PROJECT

PALAUAN JAPANESE PROJECT

I have been investigating the language structure of Japanese speakers in Palau, in collaboration with Professor David Britain of Bern University. Two topics that interest us in particular are Japanese dialect contact and the structural obsolescence of that variety in the terminal Japanese speech community in Palau.

Given that Palau was a settlement colony during the Japanese regime where Japanese migrants to Palau came from many different parts of Japan and undoubtedly were speakers of quite radically different varieties, we have been considering the extent to which models of dialect contact (e.g., Trudgill 1986, 2010, Britain 2002, 2018, Britain and Trudgill 1999) can account for the structure of Palauan Japanese.

Since all former Japanese settlers were eventually expatriated from Palau to Japan and since the official language has been replaced from Japanese to English, we are also investigating whether, structurally, the L2 Japanese spoken in Palau is dying in the same way as first language varieties are known to obsolesce (e.g., Dorian’s 1981 work on East Sutherland Gaelic). A real-time study (both panel and trend studies) of linguistic obsolescence in this Japanese koine after twenty years is currently underway.

PALAUAN ENGLISH PROJECT

PALAUAN ENGLISH PROJECT

I have been investigating a previously undescribed postcolonial variety of English that is newly emerging in Palau, in collaboration with Professor David Britain of Bern University. Given that previous studies on the postcolonial Englishes have mostly focused on former British colonies, our first variationist study on Palauan English hopes to provide a rare example of a postcolonial variety of American English.

We are assessing which phase our investigation of phonological, morphosyntactic and discourse-pragmatic features would assign Palauan English in the Dynamic Model (Schneider 2007). We are investigating to what extent Palauan as an IDG (indigenous) strand, Filipino English as an ADS (adstrate) strand and American English brought by returnee Palauans from the US has had an impact upon the formation of Palauan English. We are also examining to what extent Palauan English shares similarities with other postcolonial Englishes.

We are currently engaged in collaborative research projects (funded by KAKEN[1][2][3] and SNSF), building a large corpus of spoken and written Micronesian Englishes collected in six different islands: i.e., Palau (Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain); Saipan (Dominique Hess); Kosrae (Sara Lynch); Kiribati (Tobias Leonhardt); Guam (Eva Kuske); and Nauru (Laura Mettler). We conduct a comparative analysis of the same features across Micronesian Englishes, in order to investigate to what extent there are similarities and differences in the linguistic characteristics of these Micronesian Englishes, while paying attention to both the roles of different indigenous substrate languages and the effects of both different experiences of colonial administration policy and its consequent demographic change in shaping how these Englishes are being formed.

MULTILINGUAL PALAU PROJECT

MULTILINGUAL PALAU PROJECT

This is my PhD project dating back to 1997. I have conducted a social network analysis of language maintenance and shift and a case study on the sociolinguistic gender paradox in Palau, investigating cultural hegemony and language ideologies and contact-induced borrowing in Palauan. Since 2017, I have begun re-studies of multilingual Palau after 20 years.

In 1997-1998, in order to explore the previously undescribed multilingual situation of Palau, I conducted a large-scale ethnographic survey on: language use in various domains; language ability in Palauan, Japanese, English; and language attitudes towards these languages (language loyalty) as well as code-switching and borrowing (linguistic purism). In this project, I will conduct a re-study to assess to what extent the language shift predicted by the apparent-time model in 1998 has progressed after twenty years as well as examine the validity of apparent-time approaches to multilingualism.

Given that Palau was administered by four colonial nations in different ways, I have considered the extent to which the “contact-induced borrowing scale” (Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Thomason 2001) can account for the structure and type of Spanish, German, Japanese and English loanwords used in Palauan. I am currently assessing to what extent intensity of contact with non-indigenous languages (both old colonial and new migrant languages like Tagalog) has changed in recent years, and consequently, to what extent different types (at the lexical, phonological, morphosyntactic and semantic level) and origins of borrowings have been retained, changed, disappeared or newly emerged in Palauan. In particular, I am focusing on food-related loanwords.

MULTICULTURAL JAPAN PROJECT

MULTICULTURAL JAPAN PROJECT

I have also begun a project on multicultural children and adolescents with high geographical mobility in Japan, in collaboration with Akiko Okumura, Naomi Tokumasu and Flávia Feijo of Tokyo University. We investigate the linguistic consequences of language contact as well as dialect contact in the following speech communities in Japan:

Under construction

If you have Nikkei Latino background and would like to join us, please contact me!

Under construction

If you (or your children) have returnee background and would like to join us, please contact me!

Under construction

If you (or your children) attend/attended international school and would like to join us, please contact me!

RESEARCH GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Principal Investigator

April 2017-March 2020
KAKEN grant by JSPS (the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science).
Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research.
Project no. 16KK0025: Universality and locality in Micronesian Englishes: Comparative analyses across Micronesian Englishes and real-time studies of Palauan English over 20 years.
Research collaborator: David Britain (University of Bern).
April 2016-March 2020
KAKEN grant by JSPS.
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research B.
Project no. 16H03412: Real-time studies of multilingual Palau: Language change over 20 years.
Research collaborator: David Britain (University of Bern).
April 2013-March 2016
KAKEN grant by JSPS.
Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research.
Project no. 25580085: Discourse-Pragmatic variation and change in contact varieties of languages: A cross-linguistic perspective.
Research collaborator: David Britain (University of Bern).
April 2013-March 2016
Risona Asia Oceania Foundations.
Collaborative Research Grant.
Project no. 2418; 2514; 2616: A comparative sociolinguistic perspective on contact languages in the Pacific.
Research collaborator: David Britain (University of Bern).
April 2010-March 2014
KAKEN grant by MEXT (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology in Japan).
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists A.
Project no. 22682003: The sociolinguistics of the rise and fall of postcolonial languages: The case of Micronesia.
Research collaborator: David Britain (University of Bern).
April 2006-March 2010
KAKEN grant by MEXT.
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists B.
Project no. 18720100: Apparent-time and real-time analyses of language attrition: Palauan Japanese as an endangered variety.
Research collaborator: David Britain (University of Essex).
September 2006-June 2007
The Tokyo Foundation.
The Tokyo Foundation Fellowship Fund.
Host institution: Department of Linguistics, Queen Mary, University of London.
April 2005-March 2007
Risona Asia Oceania Foundations.
Research Grant for Young Scholars.
Project no: Language obsolescence in Micronesia: The case of Japanese in Palau.
April 2003-March 2006
KAKEN grant by MEXT.
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists B.
Project no. 15720097: A variationist approach to dialect contact and language obsolescence: The case of Palauan Japanese in a former Japanese territory of Micronesia.

Research collaborator

January 2015-June 2018
SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation)
Project funding (Div. I-III)
Project no. 156849: English in paradise?: Emergent varieties in Micronesia.
Principle investigator: David Britain (University of Bern)
October 2000-September 2001
JFEC (Japan Foundation Endowment Committee, UK)
Research Grant for Japanese Studies
Project no. 120: Palauan Japanese: Language death in the Western Pacific.
Principle investigator: David Britain (University of Essex)
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