The studies of the Japanese language and psycholinguistics have advanced quite significantly in
the last half century thanks to the progress in the study of cognition and brain mechanisms
associated with language acquisition use and disorders and in particular because of
technological developments in experimental techniques employed in psycholinguistic studies.
This volume contains 18 chapters that discuss our brain functions specifically the process of
Japanese language acquisition - how we acquire learn the Japanese language as a first second
language - and the mechanism of Japanese language perception and production - how we comprehend
produce the Japanese language. In turn we address the limitations of our current understanding
of the language acquisition process and perception production mechanism. Issues for future
research on language acquisition and processing by users of the Japanese language are also
presented. Chapter titles1. Learning to become a native listener of Japanese (Reiko Mazuka)2.
The nature of the count mass distinction in Japanese (Mutsumi Imai & Junko Kanero) 3.
Grammatical deficits in Japanese children with Specific Language Impairment (Shinji Fukuda
Suzy E. Fukuda & Tomohiko Ito) 4. Root infinitive analogues in Child Japanese (Keiko Murasugi)
5. Acquisition of scope (Takuya Goro) 6. Narrative development in L1 Japanese (Masahiko Minami)
7. L2 acquisition of Japanese (Yasuhiro Shirai) 8. The modularity of grammar in L2 acquisition
(Mineharu Nakayama & Noriko Yoshimura) 9. Tense and aspect in Japanese as a second language
(Alison Gabriele & Mamori Sugita Hughes) 10. Language acquisition and brain development:
Cortical processing of a foreign language (Hiroko Hagiwara)11. Resolution of branching
ambiguity in speech (Yuki Hirose) 12. The role of learning in theories of English and Japanese
sentence processing (Franklin Chang) 13. Experimental syntax: word order in sentence processing
(Masatoshi Koizumi) 14. Relative clause processing in Japanese: psycholinguistic investigation
into typological differences (Baris Kahraman & Hiromu Sakai) 15. Processing of syntactic and
semantic information in the human brain: evidence from ERP studies in Japanese. (Tsutomu
Sakamoto) 16. Issues in L2 Japanese sentence processing: similarities differences with L1 and
individual differences in working memory (Koichi Sawasaki & Akiko Kashiwagi-Wood) 17. Sentence
production models to consider for L2 Japanese sentence production research (Noriko Iwasaki) 18.
Processing of the Japanese language by native Chinese speakers (Katsuo Tamaoka)
