Toshiya TANAKAʼs Homepage
Toshiya TANAKA
Professor
Department of English
Factulty of Languages and Cultures
Kyushu University
744
Moto’oka
Nishi-ku, Fukuoka
819-0395 Japan
e-mail toshiyat[at]flc.kyushu-u.ac.jp
Academic Background:
BA in English Linguistics, Faculty
of Letters, Nagoya University,
March 1984
MA in English Linguistics, Graduate
School of Letters, Nagoya
University, March 1986
Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Kagoshima University, April 1988 – September
1990
Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Kagoshima University, October 1990 –
March 1991
Associate Professor, Institute of Languages and Cultures, Kyushu University,
April 1991 – March 2000
Associate Professor, Faculty of Languages and Cultures, Kyushu University, April
2000 – December 2010
PhD in Linguistics and English Language, Faculty of Humanities, the University
of Manchester, April 2005
Professor, Faculty of
Languages and Cultures, Kyushu University, January 2011 – present
As a historical
linguist, I am interested not only in the documented history of the English
language (i.e. ca. 700 to this day)
but also in the historical and comparative study of Old English grammar,
especially of the Old English or Proto-Germanic verbal system. In order to
handle a wide variety of issues as to how the OE or PGmc. verbal system grew out
of the counterpart of the parent language, I employ comparative Germanic and
comparative Indo-European linguistics theories which have evolved through ample
and profound knowledge of Gmc. and other IE languages accumulated during these
200 years or more.
Comparative
linguistics is based on solid sound laws, and comparative Germanic linguistics
in particular is founded on those famous regular sound changes represented by
Grimm’s and Verner’s laws. The view has been widely accepted from the beginning
of the 21st century onwards that the PIE (Proto-Indo-European) phonological
system contained three distinct fricative phonemes called ‘laryngeals’, namely,
*h1, *h2, and *h3,
whereas this conception, generally called the ‘laryngeal theory’, had been
controversial throughout the 20th century. In other words, only *s used to be ascribed as the single
fricative phoneme to the set of the PIE sounds, even after Ferdinand de
Saussure (1879) Mémoires sur le système primitif
des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes had brought forward a
seminal idea, refined into the later ‘laryngeal theory’, in the name of coefficients sonantiques instead of the
appellation of ‘laryngeals’, though under his coefficients were subsumed six other ‘sonants’ (i.e. i, u,
r, l, m, and n) as well. Since the laryngeal theory
got taken as read, new sound laws indispensable for up-to-date investigation
have been discovered and the formulation of PIE vowel gradation (or ablaut)
traceable in various types of IE inflection and word formation has been
simplified and/or generalized to a larger extent.
On
the other hand, the PIE grammar conventionally reconstructed on the strength of
the primarily Greco-Aryan evidence might be revised to some degree by, say, the
Tocharo-Anatolian data whose studies have progressed markedly since the
excavation and decipherment of those languages early in the 20th century. It is
expected that the present century will see new elucidation of numerous problems
about IE languages which have so far remained unsettled.
My
monograph published in 2011 (based on my PhD thesis submitted to the University
of Manchester in 2005) attempts to give a new explanatory account of how the OE
and PGmc. preterite-present verbs developed from the PIE verbal system. This
book has so far been reviewed by three influential scholars in internationally
prestigious historical linguistics journals and has also been mentioned in
several internationally important works (cf.
http://www.flc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~toshiyat/appendix.html).
One
of my current challenges is to try to disclose and/or reconstitute the
historical processes through which the seven classes of the OE and PGmc. strong
verbs were created from the post-PIE verbal system. I am hoping that the
application or non-application of Verner’s law, unambiguously discernible in
Gmc. strong verb formations, will afford a substantial clue to explicate the
origin and development of the PGmc. strong verb system that can be subdivided
into the seven classes.
Regarding
education, I have long been engaged in EFL (English as a foreign language) at
Kyushu University. In cooperation with my colleagues at the FLC (Faculty of
Languages and Cultures), I submitted my manuscripts to and compiled several
important teaching materials for the good of students at Kyushu University (cf.
http://www.flc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~toshiyat/education.html).
I
also contributed to publication of several dictionaries through Sanseido,
Kenkyusha, and Shogakukan, Tokyo (cf.
http://www.flc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~toshiyat/research.html).
Major publications in the field of
historical linguistics:
“Semantic Changes of CAN and MAY: Differentiation and
Implication”, Linguistics 28/1 (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), pp. 89-123.
1990.
“Characteristics of Ability-Signifying Verbs in
Earlier English and Other Languages: A Synchronic and Diachronic
Investigation”, Linguistics 29/3, (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter) pp.
361-396. 1991
“English WIT and Related Verbs: A Semantic Quality”,
in Nakano, H. et al. (eds.), Structural and Historical Studies on Languages (Tokyo:
Eichosha), pp. 403-416. 1991.
“Mental Representations in Developing Modals: A
Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Review”, in J. Altarriba (ed.), Cognition
and Culture: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Cognitive Psychology (Advances in
Psychology 103. Amsterdam: North-Holland), pp. 77-94. 1993.
“Old English MAGAN and Related Verbs: Further Evidence
for a Hyperlexical Approach”, in M. Amano et al. (eds.) Inquiries into the
Depth of Language (Tokyo: Eichosha), pp. 489-506, 1996.
“Gmc. Preterite-Presents and IE Nouns of Agency: A
Test for the Original Stativity”, Masachiyo Amano, Toshiya Tanaka, Masayuki
Ohkado, Miho Nishio, Makoto Kondo, Tomoyuki Tanaka (eds.) Synchronic and
Diachronic Studies on Language: A Festschrift for Dr. Hirozo Nakano (Linguistics
and Philology 19), Dept. of English Linguistics, Nagoya University,
pp.291-305, 2000.
“Prosodic Features of Old English
Preterite-Present Verbs: Evidence from Beowulf”, Studies
in English Language and Literature (FLC, Kyushu University) 51, pp.1-26,
January 2001.
“The Origin and Development of the *es- vs. *wes-
Suppletion in the Germanic Copula: From a Non-Brugmannian Standpoint” North-Western
European Language Evolution (Odense: Odense University Press) 40, pp.3-27,
April 2002.
“Old English ǣt ‘ate’ and the Preterite Plural Formation
of the Strong Class V Verbs”, Studies in English Language and Literature (FLC, Kyushu University) 56, pp.13-22, February 2006.
The Genesis of Preterite-Present Verbs: the
Proto-Indo-European Stative-Intransitive System and Morphological Conflation (Languages and Cultures Series XIX), x +
246 pages. Fukuoka: Faculty of Languages
and Cultures, Kyushu University. ISSN: 1348-1800, not for sale. March 2009.
“The Proto-Germanic Third Person Plural
Strong Preterite and the Proto-Indo-European ‘Type I’ Thematic Present
Formations: With Special Reference to the Strong IV and V Classes”, Linguistic Science (FLC, Kyushu
University) 44, pp.1-23. March 2009.
“Osthoff’s Law and the Rise of the Strong
I-III Preterite Plural Formations in Proto-Germanic”, Studies in Languages and Cultures (FLC, Kyushu University) 25,
pp.7-21. March 2010.
“Remarks
on Two Morphophonological Differences Between Strong and Preterite-Present
Verbs in Germanic”, Studies in English Language and Literature (FLC, Kyushu University) 65, pp.13-22.
March 2015.
(For more details, see http://www.flc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~toshiyat/research.html.)