Date: Sunday 12th June 2022, 9:30-11:30am (GMT)
Speaker: Professor Haruo Kubozono (Professor Emeritus and Invited Professor at National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics) <biography>
Participation: Online only (using Zoom)
Fee: BATJ members: £5, non-member: £10
Registration and payment (Eventbrite): To register, please go to our Eventbrite page.

*Due to the time difference from Japan, the starting time is slightly earlier than usual. We appreciate your understanding.

Outline of the seminar:

This talk demonstrates the dual and self-contradictory nature of language and speech prosody in their relation to human communication. On the one hand, language exists primarily for communication in which prosodic features such as word accent and intonation play pivotal roles. On the other hand, language changes as its basic nature and so do various aspects of speech prosody. This changing nature of language and prosody naturally results in diversity, both diachronic and synchronic. This talk points out that these variations in language and prosody often create difficulties in communication, both across languages/dialects and across generations.

Born in Kagoshima in 1957, Haruo KUBOZONO studied English at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies, English linguistics at Nagoya University, and linguistics and phonetics at the University of Edinburgh (PhD 1988). He taught linguistics at Nanzan University, Osaka University of Foreign Studies and Kobe University before he was appointed as professor at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics  (NINJAL). He is now Professor Emeritus and Invited Professor at the Institute. He recently edited Handbook of Japanese Phonetics and Phonology (De Gruyter Mouton) and The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants (Oxford University Press).