Rumiko Shinzato

Professor Emerita of Japanese

Member Of:
  • School of Modern Languages
  • ADVANCE IAC

Overview

Dr. Rumiko Simonds received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Hawaii. She joined the Georgia Tech faculty as an Assistant Professor of Japanese in 1991 and in 2004 was promoted to Professor in the School of Modern Languages. A specialist in pragmatics, historical linguistics (grammaticalization), cognitive linguistics and Japanese and Okinawan linguistics, she has published numerous articles in such refereed journals as Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Historical Pragmatics, Linguistics, Language Sciences, Journal of Japanese Linguistics, and Gengo Kenkyu. She has contributed chapters in several edited volumes from John Benjamins and Mouton de Gruyter. Her co-authored books, Synchrony and Diachrony of Okinawan Kakari Musubi in Comparative Perspective with Premodern Japanese (2013) and The Language of the Old Okinawan Omoro Sōshi: Reference Grammar, with Textual Selections (2022) were published by Brill. Her third co-authored book Basic Okinawan: From Conversation to Grammar is scheduled to be published by the University of Hawaii Press. She completed the Japanese section of the joint project, "Advanced/Intermediate Language and Culture through Song: New Materials for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Russian" funded by the DOE. She received several grants from NEAC (North East Association of Asian Council) and Japan Foundation. She is currently working on developing an Okinawan Spoken Language Corpus (The Ministry of Japan grant 2019-2023). She is invited to teach at UCLA as a visiting professor in Spring 2023. 

Areas of
Expertise:
  • Grammaticalization
  • Historical Linguistics
  • Japanese And Ryukyuan Linguistics
  • Online Song-based Courseware
  • Popular Culture
  • Subjectivity

Interests

Research Fields:
  • Japanese
  • Linguistics
Geographic
Focuses:
  • Asia (East)

Courses

  • JAPN-2001: Intermediate Japanese I
  • JAPN-3001: Advanced Japanese I
  • JAPN-4113: Adv Reading & Listening
  • JAPN-4173: Anime: Culture&Society
  • JAPN-4183: Japn Cult/Soc Thru Songs
  • JAPN-4500: Intercultural Seminar

All Publications

Books

Journal Articles

Chapters