On the morning of September 23, 2023, Professor Ueno Takahumi of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan, gave an online academic lecture at the Expert Forum on East Asian Culture. His lecture entitled "The Study of Noun Clauses from the Perspective of Linguistic Typology—Centered on the Comparison between the Previous Generation Japanese and Modern Japanese". The lecture was hosted by the Center for East Asian Cultural Studies of the College and presided over by Professor Liu Yuzhen, Director of the Center. More than 70 students and teachers from Nankai University, Xiamen University, Soochow University, Yunnan University, Yan’an University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Shanghai Normal University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Shanghai International Studies University, Tianjin Foreign Studies University, Dalian University of Foreign Studies, University of Macau, Hiroshima University, Waseda University, and other Chinese and Japanese universities attended the online lecture.
Professor Liu Yuzhen introduced Professor Ueno's academic experience
From a cross-language perspective, the lecture first outlined the structure of "noun+copula" in English, French, Italian, Arabic, and Russian, and defined the grammatical function of copula. Then according to the relevant definition, Prof. Ueno explained and analyzed nominal sentences in Japanese. He argued that the traditional view that "だ" is a Japanese copula is debatable, and that the Japanese copula in the past tense can be analyzed as "だった" and the Japanese copula in the non-past tense can be seen as the zero form (∅). He further analyzed the possibility of this view from diachronic research and used Man'yōshū as an example, summarizing three types of nominal sentences in old Japanese and pointing out that the most frequently used noun sentence form is zero form (∅).
Slides presented by Prof. Ueno
This lecture is broad in vision and rich in content, benefiting the participating teachers and students. During the interactive session, Prof. Liu Yuzhen and Prof. Peng Guanglu from Beijing Institute of Technology, two well-known experts in Japanese linguistics, had an in-depth exchange with Prof. Ueno. In addition, some doctoral students in linguistics actively asked questions, warming the academic atmosphere. The lecture promotes academic communication between China and Japan, achieving full success.
