Greetings from the former President Harumi Kobayashi 4th President of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences Language is the most important tool for both communication and thought processes. Any human or environmental aspect that is considered important is given a label. These labels are then used by humans to convey information to themselves and others, build societies, produce innumerable stories and works, and promote research and development. Language, as well as non-linguistic information, directly reflects how humans think and behave, so it can be said that language itself makes up the nature of human beings. Thus, the study of language helps us to understand human beings. Article 2 of the...

Greetings from the former President Greetings Yukio Otsu 2nd Chairperson of JSLS Dear Members, I have been elected chairperson of the Japanese Society for Linguistic Sciences, succeeding Yuriko Oshima-Takane, the first Chairperson, who has been instrumental in bringing JSLS to its present form. As many of you are well-aware, JSLS started as a society closely related to the JCHAT activities. In the course of time, as the number of members grew, the scope of activities expanded well beyond JCHAT. Thus, we changed our name to its present form, hoping that JSLS will become a useful forum among researchers of diverse fields including linguistics, psychology, education, computer science, brain science, and...

Greetings from the former President Yasuhiro Shirai 3rd President, Japanese Society for Language Sciences The Japanese Society for Language Sciences held its inaugural conference in 1999, and in 2008, its 10th conference. During our first decade, through trial and error, we have achieved a unique position in the area of language sciences in Japan and in the world. The past plenary speakers have included: 1999 Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie Mellon University) Sophia University 2000 Michael Tomasello (Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) Coop-in, Kyoto 2001 William O’Grady (University of Hawaii at Manoa) Japan Women’s University 2002 Andrew Radford (University of Essex) Japan Women’s University 2003 Catherine Snow (Harvard University) Kobe University...

From the Preface to the first volume of JSLS proceedings The Japanese Society for Language Sciences (JSLS) was funded in August, 1999, with the objective of bringing together researchers from diverse academic disciplines who hold a common goal: understanding human language. The Society holds a conference once a year and publishes the proceedings to promote scientific exchanges and discussions among researchers from different  disciplines and approaches. We believe that this volume has successfully achieved this goal. The scope of JSLS includes topics such as first and second language acquisition, language processing, language disorders, speech perception, phonology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, discourse, bilingualism, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics, and comparative linguistics. In addition, we plan...