Profiles

The Grammar of Collaboration : Yoshihisa Kitagawa
In Search of Critical Distance :Sung-Bin Ko

The Grammar of Collaboration

Associate Professor of Linguistics and new EASC faculty member Yoshihisa Kitagawa hopes to be part of a revolution in the study of linguistics. As the founding member of a new research group, Professor Kitagawa has helped to gather scholars in a number of different subfields to look at the problems of linguistics in a new way. "I think that linguistics has become too specialized and separate. By gathering phoneticians, syntacticians, semantists, and psycholinguists, for example, we are able to work together to solve otherwise recalcitrant, intertwined problems. My hope is that we can bring the splintered field back together!"

Professor Kitagawa’s interest in linguistics started when he was a Master’s student at International Christian University in Tokyo, where he began his formal study of linguistics as a student of theoretical linguistics in English education. After completing his M.A., he spent time in Arizona before doing his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where his work focused on the notion of subject in Japanese and English.

Generally, Professor Kitagawa’s research centers on grammar which is regarded in modern linguistics as an abstract mental organ in the brain that functions independently from other cognitive systems. Currently, his work is focused on having a broader view of grammar by looking at the way its contribution to our interpretation and grammatical judgment of sentences is influenced by intonation and information structure in their actual use. "In my opinion, this research strategy will revolutionize the way syntax is pursued in the field of linguistics."

As a teacher, Professor Kitagawa’s philosophy is that teachers should not impose anything on students without arguing from the beginning why they should think that way. He finds that in every class, both graduate and undergraduate, there are always some students who are genuinely hard-working and interested in linguistics. "Students become excited and contribute with their own insights. They often come up with very interesting questions that also challenge me to think through their ideas. Those are the students that keep me interested in what I teach!"

His recent scholarly accomplishments include the publication of a book called Seesee bunpoo no kangaekata (Ways of Thinking in Generative Grammar) in Japan from Kenkyusha last year. The book, which he wrote with his former student, is a mixture of introductory materials and their original research. They hope it is a book that is appreciated by novices as well as experts alike and reviews so far indicate that it is. Professor Kitagawa was also asked by the English Society of Japan to organize and keynote a symposium on the topic of "Prosody and Syntax" and once again the response was positive.

Professor Kitagawa became affiliated with EASC in 2002. Though he has not had a chance to be actively involved in work being done by the Center, he is happy to be part of such a large network of scholars who are working on East Asia.

In Search of Critical Distance

Sung-Bin Ko

Visiting Scholar Sung-Bin Ko, Assistant Professor in the Politics Department at Cheju University in South Korea has made a career of studying at East Asia from a variety of perspectives. He explains, "It is important to view what is going on in East Asia today both from an Asian perspective and a Western one. We cannot depend exclusively on Western theories, and we must understand that any perspective has its own ideological predilections."

During the year he is at I.U., Professor Ko plans to focus on "what people in the United States think about today’s world matters." He hopes to further his research on the history of the tensions between China and Korea as well as his research on the East Asian response to US-led globalization.

After doing his B.A. degree in civil engineering at Kyunghee University in Seoul, Korea, Professor Ko soon realized that studying politics would have a greater impact on his world at the time than engineering would. He decided to do his first M.A. in Politics, with a focus on Chinese politics, and after completing an M.A. in Korea, Professor Ko traveled to Taiwan to put his Chinese skills to use while working for a second M.A. While in Taiwan, on top of developing better Chinese skills, Professor Ko also witnessed for the first time the reality of the standoff between China and Taiwan.

In Taiwan, Professor Ko began to expand supplement his develop his analytical skills to supplement his understanding of Chinese history and language. He decided that they best way to develop expertise that was not overly influenced by the often one-sided ideologies he viewed in China and Taiwan was to remove himself from East Asia altogether. He enrolled in the University of London, where he completed a Ph.D. in Political Science at the School of Oriental and African Studies. There Professor Ko was able to gain the critical distance he desired.

While Professor Ko’s studies focused on China, he considers himself an East Asianist in the truest sense. His interests span the countries and issues of East Asia. He is currently considering the role that Japan’s misrepresentation of its past has played in increasing Chinese and Korean nationalism, the impact of Japanese remilitarization, the philosophical issues that under gird East Asian international relations, and whether or not "Asian values" actually exist and what those values are different from Western values.

Professor Ko came to Bloomington in February and will be at I.U. for one year. He concludes, "While I find the I.U. campus and the rural setting of Bloomington to be quite nice, I must admit that I don’t agree with the United States’ unilateral diplomacy!" Welcome to America, Professor Ko!

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