Shigeru Miyagawa
Linguist & Online Education Specialist
Profile
Professor of Linguistics &
Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language & Culture (post-tenure)
| MIT |
miyagawa@mit.edu
Visiting Professor in Biosciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (from September 2022). Awarded the São Paulo Excellence Chair.
Executive Advisor and Visiting Professor, Research Center for Society 5.0, Seikei University, Tokyo, Japan (from April 2022)
Project Professor and Director of Online Education, University of Tokyo (cross-appointment with MIT), 2014 - 2019.
External Board Member, Cyber University, Softbank Group (from 2019).
Shigeru Miyagawa is a linguist and an expert on online education. He has published widely in linguistics, including three books from the MIT Press. Recently, he developed the Integration Hypothesis for human language evolution, which proposes that human language arose from the combination of simpler systems including those that are associated with birdsong and also primate alarm calls. The idea was featured in a BBC Radio4 program, What the songbird said. For this work, he was awarded the São Paulo Excellence Chair. Along with his home institution, MIT, he has held positions at the University of Tokyo (Director of Online Education, 2013-2018), University of São Paulo (Visiting Professor of Biosciences, 2021-), and Seikei University (Senior Advisor, 2022 - ).
ONLINE EDUCATION
Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning, 2018 - 2021.
Served on the original MIT committee that proposed OpenCourseWare.
Chair of the MIT OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Committee, 2010 - 2013.
Co-director of Visualizing Cultures (visualizingcultures.mit.edu) with the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, John W. Dower.
With John Dower, Andrew Gordon of Harvard, and Gennifer Weisenfeld of Duke, he created Visualizing Japan, a Harvard-MIT MOOC offered by edX that has attracted over 20,000 learners world-wide. Visualizing Japan was a Finalist for the prestigious Japan Prize in 2015.
Producer of the multimedia program, StarFestival, which stars George Takei as the voice of the main character. StarFestival was awarded the Distinguished Award at the Multimedia Grandprix 2000 (Japan).
LINGUISTICS
Published several books, including three recent ones from MIT Press, and over sixty articles.
His Integration Hypothesis for language evolution is developed in jointly authored articles (Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019). it received mention in the journal Science and its news website (http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2013/02/tweet-screech-hey).
BBC produced a 30-minute special inspired by his Integration Hypothesis of human language evolution. It aired in May 2015 on Radio 4, which has a multi-million listener base (What the Songbird Said). It won the 2015 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for radio reporting.
He was awarded the São Paulo Excellence Chair (2022-2026) for his work in language and evolution, and holds Visiting Professorship of Bioscience at USP.
The British composer, Peter Wyer, under a commission from Arts Brookfield of the New York World Financial Center, composed the orchestral and choir piece in part inspired by Shigeru Miyagawa’s Integration Hypothesis. "We must say goodbye." Link to the song. WNYC interview with Pete Wyer and John Schaefer. Song of the Human Premiere 10/12/2016. Announcement
“OpenCourseWare redefined the relationship between MIT and the society it serves, bringing the two closer together, with benefits to both sides.”
RECENT NEWS
SPAGAD Lect.Series:Speaker-Addressee Phrase & Commitment Phrase -Syntax in the treetops, Apr.29,2022
Review of Syntax in the treetops, Open Journal of Linguistics, by J. Song and M. Deng. May 2024.
New article in Glossa, “The commitment of rhetorical questions,” with Virginia Hill, February 2024.
New piece on looking at Generative AI from the perspective of human evolution, This View of Life, November 2023.
Review of Syntax in the Treetops in Journal of Linguistics by Nicholas Catasso. February 2023.
In press, “Commitment phrase: Linking proposition to illocutionary force,” Linguistic Inquiry (with Virginia Hill). Publication in spring 2023.
Video lecture on human language in evolution, USP Lecture, University of São Paul. January 10, 2022.
Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics 17 will be held September 27-29, 2023, at the National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar. See website for Call for Papers.
New article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, “On the representation of hierarchical structure: Revisiting Darwin’s musical protolanguage,” with Analía Arévalo ,Vitor Nóbrega (November 2022).
An article I wrote about the future of education appeared in Nikkei, WSJ of Japan 8/16/2022.
Two new articles on MOOCs published in the proceedings of Learning@Scale, June 2022:
“The Relationship Between COVID-19 Severity and Computer Science MOOC Learner Achievement: A Preliminary Analysis,” Proceedings of Learning@Scale, June 2022. With Anindya Roy, Michael Yee, Meghan Perdue, Julius Stein, Ana Bell, Ronisha Carter.
“How COVID-19 Affected Computer Science MOOC Learner Behavior and Achievements: A Demographic Study,” Proceedings of Learning@Scale, June 2022. With Michael Yee, Anindya Roy, Meghan Perdue, Julius Stein, Ana Bell, Ronisha Carter.
Syntax in the Treetops published by MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry monograph), May 3, 2022. MIT News story.
Miyagawa was awarded the São Paulo Excellence Chair for his work in language and evolution. This award, given by the São Paulo Research Foundation, will support research at the University of São Paulo in archeology, biology, neuroscience, linguistics, primatology, and animal communication studies. Miyagawa will be appointed as a visiting faculty member in USP’s Institute of Biosciences. The research will begin March 1, 2022.
New article, “Revisiting Fitch and Hauser’s observation that tamarin monkeys can learn combinations based on finite-state grammar” Frontiers in Psychology, November 29, 2021.
History channel article about cave art talks about Miyagawa’s idea of acoustics, cave art, and language. October 27, 2021.
New article, “What will remain?” Inside Higher Education, June 8, 2021. With Meghan Perdue.
New article, “On the 20th anniversary of OpenCourseWare: How it began,” MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XXXIII No. 5 May/June 2021. With Hal Abelson and Dick Yue.
New article, “What will remain post-pandemic?” MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XXXIII No. 5 May/June 2021. With Meghan Perdue.
Miyagawa speaks at the Anti-Asian Hate Solidarity Rally, May 31, 2021, Boston Common.
Panel on being an Asian-American, hosted by the Chinese Americans of Lexington, MA, May 20, 2021.
Under contract! Syntax in the Treetops. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph, MIT Press. January 20, 2021. Pre-publication version Manuscript updated June 20, 2021.
Pete Wyer, a British composer, dedicates a movement to Miyagawa from his new musical piece, For Love and Only for Love: Letters to New York, premiering at the New York Botanical Garden, December 2020. Interview with the famous WNYC music announcer, John Schaefer (third paragraph for the dedication).
“Moving abruptly online: What it was like for faculty and for students.” MIT Faculty Newsletter. November/December 2020. Vol. XXXIII No. 2. With Meghan Perdue.
“A renewed focus on the practice of teaching,” Inside Higher Ed. November 11, 2020. With Meghan Perdue.
“Inducing and blocking labeling” (with Danfeng Wu and Masa Koizumi) published in Glossa, 12/31/2019.
Miyagawa quoted in a New York Times article (towards the end) about a recent discovery reported in Nature of cave art in Indonesia. December 2019.
New article, “The beginning of innovation,” on Medium. November 2019.
Review article of Agreement beyond phi (2017 MIT Press) by Masao Ochi, English Linguistics.
Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL) 16 will be hosted by the National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, September 24, 25, 26, 2020.
“Systems underlying human and Old World monkey communication: One, two, or infinite.” Frontiers in Psychology, September 2019, with Esther Clarke. Article. MIT News.
Organized a workshop on human language in evolution at Creteling, Rethymnon, Crete, July 17, 2019.
MIT Press makes the 2017 LI monograph, Agreement beyond phi, available under open access (free!).
Gave a keynote address on AI and education at the Times Higher Ed Teaching Excellence Summit, June 5, 2019, London, Ontario, Canada (Western University). THE published a related article, and uploaded a short tweet. Here is the full keynote and Q&A.
Review of the MIT Press LI monograph Agreement beyond phi in Language by Elena Anagnostopoulou, December 2018. Review
Twilight Chorus of birdsongs performed by humans, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, June 21, 2018. By Pete Wyer, inspired by the Integration Hypothesis. Write up in New York Times (3rd story down).
Workshop on Case Theory and Labeling of Structures, held on Friday, August 4, 2018, at the UTokyo Komaba campus. With Masa Koizumi (Tohoku U), Mamoru Saito (Nanzan U), and Danfeng Wu (MIT).
New article on language and evolution: "Cross-modality information transfer: A hypothesis about the relationship among prehistoric cave paintings, symbolic thinking, and the emergence of language," Frontiers 2018, with Cora Lesure and Vitor Nóbrega (Frontiers 2018). MIT News article, National Geographic article, AAAS EurekaAlert!, Boston Globe.
Appointed Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning, MIT, 2018. News article.
A very short and very fast video, "Where did language come from?", by Jessica Sun, featuring the Integration Hypothesis. Youtube. 2018.
Handbook of Japanese Linguistics: Syntax, (eds) M. Shibatani, S. Miyagawa, H. Noda. De Gruyter. October 2017.
MIT Press publishes Agreement Beyond Phi, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph. MIT News story. March 17, 2017. Link to pre-copyedited Chapter 1. Review in Language by Elena Anagnostopoulou.
‘Song of the human’ by the British composer Pete M. Wyer under a commission from Arts Brookfield of the New York World Financial Center premiered in the Winter Garden of the Brookfield Place on October 12, 2016, with an installation that followed starting on October 15. This original orchestral and choir piece is in part inspired by Shigeru Miyagawa’s Integration Hypothesis. "We must say goodbye." Link to the song. WNYC interview with Pete Wyer and John Schaefer. Song of the Human Premiere 10/12/2016. Announcement
Song of the Human
Naked Scientists. BBC, Cambridge UK/ABC Australia. "Did the cavemen have names?"
"Birds, Monkeys, and Humans." A mini MOOC, free. www.edcast.org
BBC Radio 4 features Integration Hypothesis (about 17 minutes into the program). What the Songbird Said.
"What the songbird said" wins the 2015 AAAS Kavli science journalism award. Video of the producers about the production of the show.
Nature Podcast interview with Chomsky, Miyagawa, etc. (17 minutes into the program). Real Life Dr. Dolittles.
"The precedence of syntax in the rapid emergence of human language in evolution as defined by the integration hypothesis." Frontiers in Psychology. 18 March 2015 (with Vitor A. Nóbrega). Article.
"The integration hypothesis of human language evolution and the nature of contemporary languages," Frontiers in Psychology. June 2014 (with S. Ojima, R. Berwick, K. Okanoya). MIT News. Science News. LiveScience.
"The emergence of hierarchical structure in human language," Frontiers in Psychology. February 2013 (with R. Berwick, K. Okanoya). Science News. MIT News.
Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order. Leading Linguists Series.Routledge. 2012. Review by Stella Markantonatou in Linguist. YouTube Video of Chapter 10.
Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-based and Discourse Configurational Languages. 2010, MIT Press, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 54. Review by Anders Holmberg in Language. Link to The MIT Press. Link to MIT News. Link to Google Books.
Awards & Fellowships
2022-2026
São Paulo Excellence Chair, awarded by the São Paulo Research Foundation, for the research “Innovation in Human and Non-human Primate Communities.”
2015
Finalist for the Japan Prize (NHK sponsored) for Visualizing Japan. MITx/HarvardX MOOC
2013-2015
60th Anniversary Professor, International Christian University, Tokyo
2012
President's Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence, Board of Directors, Global OpenCourseWare Consortium
2004
MIT Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Award (with John W. Dower)
2002
Named one of twenty national “Shapers of the Future” by the educational technology magazine Converge
2000
Distinguished Award, Multimedia Grandprix 2000 (Japan), StarFestival Network
1997
Best of Show, for Star Festival, MacWorld Exposition, Boston, Massachusetts (presented by the Northeast Mac Conspiracy)
1995
Irwin Sizer Award, For the Most Significant Improvement to MIT Education
1982-83
National Institute of Mental Health, Individual National Research Service Award (used for postdoctoral study in linguistics at MIT)
1982-83
Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“If you share money, it disappears
But if you share knowledge, it increases.”
Links
Innovative humanities MOOC, “Visualizing Japan,” nominated for the Japan Prize
In a Q&A, course co-founder Professor Shigeru Miyagawa discusses his unique online course and its impact on digital education.
A MOOC sees its greatest impact in the classroom at MIT Flipping a classroom enhances student and faculty experience. MIT Office of Digital Learning, November 14, 2014
Publications
Books and Monographs
Syntax in the Treetops. In Press. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph. MIT Press. (January 2021). Pre-publication version. Manuscript updated June 20, 2021.
Handbook of Japanese Linguistics: Syntax, (eds) M. Shibatani, S. Miyagawa, H. Noda. De Gruyter. October 2017.
Agreement Beyond Phi, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph, MIT Press. March 2017. Open access PDF from MIT Press. Review by Elena Anagnostopoulou, Language, December 2018. Review article by Masao Ochi in English Linguistics.
Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order. Leading Linguists Series. Routledge. 2012. Review by Stella Markantonatou in Linguist. YouTube Video of Chapter 10.
Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-based and Discourse Configurational Languages. 2010, MIT Press, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 54. Review by Anders Holmberg in Language. Link to The MIT Press. Link to MIT News. Link to Google Books.
Oxford Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2008 (edited with Mamoru Saito)
Historical Development of the Accusative Case Marking in Japanese as Seen in Classical Literary Texts, special issue of Journal of Japanese Linguistics, vol. 19, 105 pp., 2003 (with Fusae Ekida). Link to manuscript.
Structure and Case Marking in Japanese, Academic Press, 259 pp., 1989.
Studies in Japanese Language Use: Papers in Linguistics Monograph Series, Alberta, Canada, co-edited with Chisato Kitagawa, 1984.
Complex Verbs and the Lexicon, Coyote Papers, Vol. I, University of Arizona Linguistics Circle, 1981 (1980 University of Arizona doctoral dissertation).
Articles
“Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, and the Quest for Fire,” This View of Life. November 2023.
“On the representation of hierarchical structure: Revisiting Darwin’s musical protolanguage,” in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, with Analía Arévalo ,Vitor Nóbrega (November 2022).
“The Relationship Between COVID-19 Severity and Computer Science MOOC Learner Achievement: A Preliminary Analysis,” Proceedings of Learning@Scale, June 2022. With Anindya Roy, Michael Yee, Meghan Perdue, Julius Stein, Ana Bell, Ronisha Carter.
“How COVID-19 Affected Computer Science MOOC Learner Behavior and Achievements: A Demographic Study,” Proceedings of Learning@Scale, June 2022. With Michael Yee, Anindya Roy, Meghan Perdue, Julius Stein, Ana Bell, Ronisha Carter.
“Revisiting Fitch and Hauser’s observation that tamarin monkeys can learn combinations based on finite-state grammar,” Frontiers in Psychology, November 29, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.772291
“What will remain?” Inside Higher Education, June 8, 2021. With Meghan Perdue.
“On the 20th anniversary of OpenCourseWare: How it began,” MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XXXIII No. 5 May/June 2021. With Hal Abelson and Dick Yue.
“What will remain post-pandemic?” MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XXXIII No. 5 May/June 2021. With Meghan Perdue.
“Moving abruptly online: What it was like for faculty and for students.” MIT Faculty Newsletter November/December 2020. Vol. XXXIII No. 2. With Meghan Perdue.
“A renewed focus on the practice of teaching,” Inside Higher Ed. November 11, 2020. With Meghan Perdue.
“Inducing and blocking labeling” Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1), 141. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.923 (with Danfeng Wu and Masa Koizumi), 12/31/2019.
“The beginning of innovation,” Medium, November 2019.
“Systems underlying human and Old World monkey communication: One, two, or infinite.” Frontiers in Psychology, September 2019, with Esther Clarke. Article. MIT News.
"Cross-modality information transfer: A hypothesis about the relationship among prehistoric cave paintings, symbolic thinking, and the emergence of language," Frontiers 2018, with Cora Lesure and Vitor Nóbrega (Frontiers 2018).
"Topicalization," Gengo Kenkyu (Linguistic Research). 152:1-29. 2017. Article.
"Integration hypothesis: A parallel model of language development in evolution," in Evolution of the Brain, Cognition, and Emotion in Vertebrates, edited by Shigeru Watanabe, Michel Hofman and Toru Shimizu, Springer, 225-247. 2017. Manuscript.
"Numeral quantifiers," In Masayoshi Shibatani, Shigeru Miyagawa, and Hisashi Noda, eds., Mouton Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, de Gruyter. October 2017. Manuscript.
"The syntax of ditransitives," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. 2017. DOI:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.186 (With Heidi Harley). Manuscript
"Second-Language Learning Effects on Automaticity of Speech Processing of Japanese Phonetic Contrasts:An MEG study." Brain Research 1652: 111-118. Fall 2016. Hisagi, M., Shafer, V. L., Miyagawa, S., Kotek, H., Sugawara, A., and Pantazis, D. Article.
"OCW: How it began," in a special Bridge volume on OpenCourseWare, National Academy of Engineering. Fall 2016, 5-11. Article.
"Negative sensitive items in Japanese," Glossa 1(1): 33. 1–0, (with Nobuaki Nishioka and Hedde Zeijlstra), DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.6
"The precedence of syntax in the rapid emergence of human language in evolution as defined by the integration hypothesis. Frontiers in Psychology. 18 March 2015 (with Vitor A. Nóbrega). Article.
"The integration hypothesis of human language evolution and the nature of contemporary languages," Frontiers in Psychology. June 2014 (with S. Ojima, R. Berwick, K. Okanoya).
"A feature-inheritance approach to root phenomena and parametric variation," Lingua 145, 276-302. 2014. (with Angel Jimenez-Fernandez). article
"Strong uniformity and ga/no conversion," English Linguistics 30:1-24, 2013, the journal of the English Linguistics Society of Japan. Article.
"The emergence of hierarchical structure in human language." Front. Psychol. 4:71. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00071. February 2013 (with R. Berwick and Kazuo Okanoya).
"Agreements that occur mainly in the main clause." Main Clause Phenomena: New Horizons, Lobke Aelbrecht, Liliane Haegeman, Rachel Nye (eds), 79-111. John Benjamins. 2012. Article.
"Genitive of depedent tense in Japanese and its correlation to genitive of negation in Slavic." In Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order, Leading Linguists Series, Routledge. 2012. Link to manuscript.
"Blocking and causatives: unexpected competition across derivations." In Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order, Leading Linguists Series, Routledge. 2012. Link to manuscript.
"The Old Japanese accusative revisited: Realizing all the universal options." In Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order, Leading Linguists Series, Routledge. 2012. Ms. date: July 2011. Link to manuscript.
"Telicity, numeral quantifier stranding, and quantifier scope." In Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order, Leading Linguists Series, Routledge. 2012. Ms. date: July 2011. Link to manuscript.
"Nominalization and argument structure: evidence for the dual-base analysis of ditransitive constructions in Japanese." In Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order, Leading Linguists Series, Routledge. 2012. Ms. date: November 2010. Link to manuscript.
"Optionality," The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism, ed. Cedrix Boeckx, Oxford UP (completed in November 2008). 2011, pp. 354-376. Article.
"Genitive subjects in Altaic and Specification of Phase," in a special Lingua volume edited by Jaklin Kornfilt and John Whitman. The date of the ms. is 6/28/09. 2011 Vol 121, pp. 1265-1282. Article.
"Genitive Subjects in Altaic," 2008. In: Ulutas, S., Boeckx, C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL4), MITWPL 56, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 181-198.MITWPL. Link to manuscript.
"Locality in Syntax and Floated Numeral Quantifiers," 2007, Linguistic Inquiry 38:645-670 (with Koji Arikawa). Article.
"On the ‘undoing’ nature of scrambling: a response to Bošković,” 2006, Linguistic Inquiry 37:607-624. Article.
"Moving to the edge." Proceedings of the KALS-KASELL International Conference on English and Linguistics, pp. 3-18. Pusan National University, Busan, Korea. June 2006. Article.
Miyagawa, Shigeru. 2007 (written in 2004/2005). Unifying agreement and agreementless languages. In Meltem Kelepir and Balkiz Öztürk, eds., MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 54: Proceedings of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics II , 47-66. Cambridge, MA: MITWPL. Article.
"EPP and Semantically Vacuous Scrambling," Joachim Sabel and Mamoru Saito, eds., The Free Word Order Phenomenon: Its Syntactic Sources and Diversity, 181-220. Mouton de Gruyter. 2005. Article.
"On the EPP," Martha McGinnis and Norvin Richards, eds., Perspective on Phases, 201-236. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 2005. Link to manuscript.
"On Weak Islands," 2004 MIT manuscript. Link to manuscript.
"A-chain Maturation Re-examined: Why Japanese Children Perform Better on "Full" Unaccusatives than on Passives," Andrea Gualmini, et al, eds., MIT Working Papers on Linguistics, to appear in Fall 2004 (with Nanako Machida and Ken Wexler). Link to manuscript.
"Decomposing Ditransitive Verbs," Proceedings of SICGG, 101-120. Summer 2004 (with Yeun-Jin Jung). Article.
"Wh-in-situ and Scrambling in the Context of Comparative Altaic Syntax," Proceedings of the First Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Spring 2004. Link to article.
"Argument Structure and Ditransitive Verbs in Japanese," Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 1-38. 2004 (with Takae Tsujioka). Article.
"A-movement Scrambling and Options Without Optionality," Word Order and Scrambling, 177-200. Simin Karimi, ed., Blackwell Publishers, 2003. Link to manuscript.
"MIT’s OpenCourseWare Initiative: A Case Study in Institutional Decision-Making," Academe Vol.88 No6, 23-27 (Journal of AAUP), with Steve Lerman. 2002. Link to article.
"Personal Media," Technos Quarterly, 2002. Link to article.
"Causatives," Natsuko Tsujimura, ed., The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, Blackwell, pp. 236-268, 2001.
"EPP, Scrambling, and Wh-in-situ," Ken Hale: A Life in Language. Michael Kenstowicz, ed., MIT Press, 2001, pp. 293-338. Link to article.
"Attachment and Japanese Relative Clause," Journal of Language Processing (with Edson Miyamoto, Ted Gibson, and Takako Aikawa) 2000.
"Light Verb Make and the Notion of Cause," Festrischft for Kazuko Inoue, 2000.
"Case dropping and unaccusatives in Japanese acquisition," Proceedings of the BU Conference on Language Acquisition (with Edson Miyamoto, Ken Wexler, and Takako Aikawa) 1999. Article.
"(S)ase as an Elsewhere Causative and the Syntactic Nature of Words," Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 16: 67 - 101. 1998 (accepted in 1995). Article.
"Against Optional Scrambling," Linguistic Inquiry 28.1, Winter 1997, pp. 1-25. Article.
"Word Order Restrictions and Nonconfigurationality," Proceedings of Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics 2, MITWPL, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, 1996, pp. 117-142. Link to article.
"JP NET: Building a Virtual Global Community of Japanese Specialists," Proceedings of the Association of Teachers of Japanese Conference at Georgetown, Association of Teachers of Japanese, Middlebury College, 1995 (with Tomoko Graham and Anne LaVin).
"Scrambling as an Obligatory Movement," Proceedings of the Nanzan Conference on Japanese Linguistics and Language Teaching, 1995.
"(S)ase as an Elsewhere Causative," Program of the Conference on Theoretical Linguistics and Japanese Language Teaching, Tsuda University, 1994, pp. 61-76.
"Case, Agreement, and Ga/No Conversion in Japanese," Proceedings of the San Diego State University Japanese/Korean Linguistic Conference, 1993, pp. 221-235.
"LF Case-checking and Minimal Link Condition," MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 1993, pp. 213-254. Link to article.
"Transitivity and Case Marking" (review article of Wesley Jacobsenís The Transitive Structure of Events in Japanese), Journal of Association of Teachers of Japanese, 1993.
"Case Realization and Scrambling," Ms., Ohio State University, 1991. Manuscript.
"Kara and Node: Extending the Study Based on Phenomenal and Structural Knowledge." Proceedings of the Middlebury Conference on Japanese Linguistics and Language Teaching, 1991.
"The Logic of kara and node," in C. Georgepolis and R. Ishihara, eds., Interdisciplinary Approach to Language: In Honor of S.-Y. Kuroda. Reidel, 1991.
"Light Verbs and the Ergative Hypothesis," Linguistic Inquiry 20.4, 1989, pp. 659-668.
"NP Movement in Japanese." Ms. Hajime Hoji (USC), Shigeru Miyagawa (Ohio State), Hiroaki Tada. 1989 (USC). Link to manuscript.
"Predication and Numeral Quantifier," in W. Poser, ed., Proceedings of the Second Japanese Syntax Workshop, pp. 157-192, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, 1988.
"Shiekikei to Goi-bumon," (Causative forms and the Lexicon), in S. Kuno and M. Shibatani, eds., Nihongogaku no Shintenkai (New directions in Japanese Linguistics), Kuroshio Shuppan, 1988.
"Unaccusative Verbs in Japanese," Proceedings of the Eastern States Conference on Linguistics 4, 1988, pp. 199-220.
"Theme Subjects and Numeral Quantifiers," in W. Tawa and N. Nakayama, eds., pp. 132-167, Proceedings of the Japanese Syntax Workshop, Connecticut College, 1987.
"Lexical Categories in Japanese," Lingua 73, 1987, pp. 29-51.
"LF Affix Raising in Japanese," Linguistic Inquiry 18, 1987, pp. 362-367. Article.
"Restructuring in Japanese," in T. Imai and M. Saito, eds., Issues in Japanese Linguistics, Foris Publications, 1987, pp 273-300.
"Wh Phrase and Wa," in John Hinds et al, eds., Perspectives on Topicalization: Studies on the Japanese Wa, Benjamin Press, 1987, pp. 185-217.
"Historical Development of the Accusative Case in Japanese (with Setsuko Matsunaga), " Journal of Asian Culture, UCLA Vol. 8, 1986, pp. 87-101.
"Verb Classes in English and Japanese: A Case Study in the Interaction of Syntax, Morphology, and Semantics," (with Naoki Fukui and Carol Tenney), Lexicon Project Working Papers 7, Center for Cognitive Science, MIT, 1985, pp. 87-101.
"Blocking and Japanese Causatives," Lingua 64, 1984, pp. 177-207. Article.
"Pragmatics of Causation in Japanese," Studies in Japanese Language Use, S. Miyagawa and C. Kitagawa, eds., 1984, pp. 147-184.
"Requesting in Japanese," Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 17, 1984, pp. 123-143.
"Self-Sustaining Dialect: A Model for Second Language Teaching (with Galal Walker)," Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Linguists, S. Hattori, ed., Tokyo, 1983, pp. 1136-1138.
"Paradigmatic Structures and Word Formation," Coyote Papers 2, University of Arizona Linguistics Circle, 1982, pp. 145-162.
Ch 2
Shigeru Miyagawa delivering a linguistics lecture, Osaka University, July, 2016
“Linguistic theory should tell us how languages are the same, and in what ways they can be different.”
MIT News - February 23, 2012 "Unique languages, universal patterns." To the chagrin of anyone who knows one of these languages but not the other, English and Japanese appear to be frustratingly different tongues governed by drastically different rules.
“The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language.”