Department of Linguistics
Woonil Baik, Ph.D.
My research interests are in the field of Phonetics and Phonological analysis with emphasis on coarticulation. Under the supervision of Prof. Sara, I plan to show the articulatory difference between the Korean affricates and the English affricates using Electropalatography. Though the Korean affricates, by many phoneticians, are considered having the same place and manner of articulation as the English affricates, the articulation of Korean affricates is quite different from that of English affricates. My research goal aims to show that the articulatory difference between the Korean affricates and the English affricates results from the different coarticulatory pattern of the stop portions and the fricative portions composing the affricate sounds.
Maria Iakovou, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Linguistics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
My research interests focus on learning and teaching Greek as a Second Language. I have been involved in many projects concerning syllabi and teaching materials development, tests construction and evaluation. I am particularly interested in the research conducted at your Department regarding Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy. During my two-month visiting research at Georgetown University, under the supervision of Prof. Tyler, I plan to expand my knowledge on the pedagogical implications of Cognitive Grammar with special focus on issues regarding teaching of the Greek modal verbs. Greek, as English, has a closed class of modals realizing under the same morphological form the modal distinction between necessity and possibility in deontic and in epistemic terms. The cognitive perspective seems to offer a unified framework in order first, to link the separate modal meanings and second, to develop their teaching account.
Junichi Kasajima, Ph.D.
Junichi Kasajima is a professor of applied linguistics of Sophia University, Tokyo. He is affiliated with the Department of Linguistics as a visiting researcher for the academic year of 2005-2006. His major area of research is Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Japanese contexts. For the past 20 years he has been engaged in foreign language education and has been compiling the New Horizon English Course, a textbook series for Japanese junior high school students. The series is approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education and currently used by 41% of Japanese public junior high school students. Being the head author, he is in the position to further improve its content and strengthen its theoretical underpinnings. He is planning to pursue his objective under the guidance of Dr. Kendall King by gaining insight into recent developments in the fields of SLA and Bilingualism.
Kyong-Sook Song, Ph.D.
During my visiting research at Georgetown University, I plan to explore the cross-cultural issues in computer-mediated communication (CMC). I am especially interested in cross-cultural differences in implicature among American students and Korean students in the U.S. in/between face-to-face conversation and the Internet Relay Chat (IRC). I have been interested in CMC for about 5 years, and I've presented papers at the international conferences and published papers on comparative analysis of English and Korean CMC. I have received a grant from the LG Yonam Foundation, and Dr. Deborah Tannen is my departmental sponsor.
Monthira Tamuang, Ph.D., Lecturer of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics Naresuan University,Thailand
My major academic interest is Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics of Thai, my native tongue, and Myanmar, the national language of Mynmar. Although Myanmar language program has been available in many tertiary institutions, research studies on Myanmar discourse and sociolinguistics are very few. My dissertation is on discourse markers in Mynmar and I believe that my investigation can clearly tell the relationship between forms and functions of the language. In addition, Discourse and History is another topic of my interest and I strongly believe that a year at Georgetown University will enable me to develop other topics related to Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Prof. Deborah Schiffrin for sponsoring me to be here and the Office of the National Tertiary Education Board and Naresuan University for providing me the research grant.