Hiroyuki Oshita

Current Positions:

• Associate Professor of Japanese and Linguistics
• Graduate Chair
• Coordinator of the Japanese Program
• Faculty Advisor to the Japanese Student Association
• Faculty Advisor to the Japanese Connection or J-CONN (Japanese Anime and Culture Club)

Education:

• 1997. Ph.D., Linguistics, University of Southern California.
• 1989. M.A., Applied Linguistics, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
• 1987. M.A., English, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
• 1984. B.Ed., Hiroshima University, Japan.

Dissertation:

• Title:    "The Unaccusative Trap":  L2 Acquisition of English Intransitive Verbs.
• Committee:    William Rutherford (Chair), Maria Luisa Zubizarreta, Maria Polinsky, Mario Saltarelli.

Publications:

• Ayako Deguchi and Hiroyuki Oshita. 2004. Meaning, Proficiency and Error Types: Variations in Nonnative Acquisition of Unaccusative Verbs. Susan H. Foster-Cohen, Michael Sharwood Smith, Antonell Sorace and Mitsuhiko Ota, eds., EuroSLA Yearbook 2003, pp. 41-65.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2004. A Review of Unaccusativity in Second Language Japanese and English by Makiko Hirakawa, Hituzi Syobo, Tokyo 2003. Second Language 4, 99-101.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2004. Is There Anything There When There Is Not There? Null Expletives and Second Language Data. Second Language Research 20, 2, 95-130.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2002. Uneasiness with the Easiest: On the Subject-Verb Order in L2 English. Second Language 1, 45-61. The Japan Second Language Association (J-SLA).
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2001. The Unaccusative Trap in Second Language Acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 23, 2, 279-304.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2000. What Is Happened May Not Be What Appears To Be Happening: a corpus study of "passive" unaccusatives in L2 English. Second Language Research 16, 4, 293-324.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2000. Trying to See the Unaccusative Forest in Second Language Acquisition. In: Social and Cognitive Factors in SLA: Selected Proceedings of the 1999 Second Language Research Forum, pp. 243-263. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1998. The Unaccusative Trap and the Development of L2 Lexicon. CLS 34: The Panels, pp. 493-510. (The Proceedings from the Panels of the Chicago Linguistic Society's Thirty-fourth Meeting. Volume 34-2.)
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1995. Compounds: a View from Suffixation and A-Structure Alteration. In: Booij, Geert and Jaap van Marle, eds. Yearbook of Morphology 1994, pp. 179-205. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1994. A-Structure Template and Formation of English Deverbal Adjectives. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics #23, pp. 247-265.

Presentations (juried):

• Hiroyuki Oshita and Ayako Deguchi. 2005. Looking for "U": Evidence for the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis. Second Language Research Forum 2005. Teachers College at Columbia University. October 7-9.
• Hiroyuki Oshita and Ayako Deguchi. 2004. Factors that Conspire to Shape "U". GASLA 7. Indiana University at Bloomington. April 15-18.
• Ayako Deguchi and Hiroyuki Oshita. 2003. Lexical Semantic and Developmental Variations in the Acquisition of Engoish Unaccusative Verbs by Native Speakers of Japanese. Japan-SLA Conference. Daito Bunka University, Tokyo. May 24-25.
• Ayako Deguchi and Hiroyuki Oshita. 2003. Meaning, Proficiency and Error Types: Variations in Nonnative Acquisition of Unacusative Verbs. EuroSLA 2003 Conference. Edinburgh, Scotland. September 19-21.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2000. Uneasiness with the Easiest: the Subject-Verb Order in L2 English. 20th Annual Second Language Research Forum. University of Wisconsin at Madison. September 7-10.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2000. On Psychological Reality of Null Expletives. American Association for Applied Linguistics 2000 Annual Convention. Vancouver, British Columbia. March 11-14.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1999. Trying to See the Unaccusativity Forest in SLA Research. Second Language Research Forum 1999. University of Minnesota. September 23-26.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1998. How Input Fools Learners: the Unaccusative Trap in L2 English. International Congress on Trends in Second Language Teaching and Learning. Ottawa, Canada. April 20-23.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1998. The Unaccusative Trap and the Development of L2 Lexicon. 34th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. University of Chicago. April 17-19.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1998. The Unaccusative Trap in L2 English. 51st Annual Kentucky Foreign Language Conference.  University of Kentucky. April 16-18.
• Hiroyuki Oshita and Joe Allen. 1996. On the Origin of 'Passivized' Unaccusatives in L2 English. Linguistic Society of America Meeting. San Diego, CA. January 4-7.
• Hiroyuki Oshita and Joe Allen. 1995. L2 Acquisition of English Unaccusative Verbs: Crosslinguistic and Developmental Aspects. EUROSLA 5 Conference. University College Dublin, Ireland. September 7-11.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1994. Compounds: a View from Suffixation and A-Structure Alteration. Linguistic Society of America Meeting. Boston, MA. January 6-9.

Presentations (unjuried):

• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2003. Conversational Story-Telling: Learning from (Good and Bad) Samples. Symposium in the Second Summer Japanese Institute: Pragramtics in the JFL Classroom. University of Hawaii at Manoa. August 8.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2000. Is There Anything There When There Is Not There?: Null Expletives in L2 English. Invited Colloquium Talk. University of Southern California. Los Angeles. April 11.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 2000. The V-S Word Order in L2 Chinese: A Reanalysis of Yuan 1999. Invited Class Talk. University of Southern California. Los Angeles. April 10.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1999. Is There a Ghost in the Bedroom?: On Psyhological Reality of Null Expletives. The Department of Linguistics Colloquium. Ohio University. November 5.
• Hiroyuki Oshita. 1996. L2 Acquisition of English Unaccusative Verbs: Structural, Crosslinguistic, and Developmental Aspects. USC Linguistics Student Workshop. Los Angeles. April 19.

Current Research Topics:

• U-shaped development on the L2 acquisition of intransitive verbs
• Lexical Conceptual Structure and L2 acquisition
• Case Marker Drop in L2 Japanese

Research Interests:

• grammatical analysis of second language acquisition, word formation, argument structure and lexical conceptual structure.
• use of authentic materials in Japanese teaching

Selected Professional Workshop/Training Participation:

• The Second Summer Japanese Institute: Pragmatics in the JFL Classroom. August 4-8, 2003. University of Hawaii at Manoa.
• The First Summer Japanese Institute: Pragmatics in the JFL Classroom. July 22 - August 2, 2002. University of Hawaii at Manoa.
• Asian Business Language Workshop, June 30 - July 1, 2000. Park City, Utah.
• ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview Workshop, June 5-8, 2000. Monterey, California.

Professional Affiliations:

• Linguistic Society of America (LSA)
• Japan Second Language Association (J-SLA)
• Ohio Association of Teachers of Japanese (OATJ)