Studies
(November 2000) Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics. Dept. of Applied Linguistics, UCLA.
(June 1995) M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language. Dept. of Applied Linguistics/TESL, UCLA.
Current position
Associate professor (L-OR/22 Lingue e Letterature del Giappone e della Corea) at the Department of Interpreting and Translation (DIT), of the University of Bologna, Italy.
Teaching experience
- (October 2002 - present). Instructor of Japanese language courses, Department of Interpreting and Translation (DIT), University of Bologna
- (February 2008 - 2013). Instructor of Japanese language courses, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Bologna
- (September 1999). Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA [conducted section meetings for "Introduction to Phonetics" (Prof. Ian Maddieson)]
- (Fall 1998). Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA [conducted section meetings for "Experimental Phonetics" (Prof. Sun-Ah Jun)]
- (Fall, Spring 1997). Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA [conducted section meetings for "Introduction to Linguistics" (Prof. Anna Szabolcsi)]
- (Winter 1997). Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA [conducted section meetings for "Introduction to Phonetics" (Prof. Bruce Hayes)]
- (Fall 1996). Teaching Assistant,, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA [conducted section meetings for "Experimental Phonetics" (Dr. Patricia Keating)]
- (September 1993-1994). Teaching Assistant, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA [conducted section meetings for "Introduction to Japanese" (Prof. Noriko Akatsuka)]
Other teaching-related experience
- (February-April 2014). Organizer of Asian Art Spring (La Primavera dell'Arte Orientale). Forlì, Italy.
- (October 2004 - September 2019). Coordinator of the Japanese Language Theater Group, Department of Interpreting and Translation (DIT), University of Bologna.
- (October 2015). Organizer of Japanese Culture Week (La Settimana della Cultura Giapponese). Forlì, Italy.
Conference/workshop presentations
- (June 2024). Effects of learning experiences on emotional speech produced by Italian learners of Japanese. The 19th Conference on Laboratory Phonology: LabPhon 19. Seoul, South Korea
- (May 2020). (Co-authored with Xinyue Li) An acoustic study of emotional speech Produced by Italian learners of Japanese. The 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020. Tokyo, Japan.
- (August 2019). (Co-authored with Aaron Albin e Ryoko Hayashi) Do learners with accurate word prosody also produce accurate sentence prosody? Lexical accent and downstep in L1 Italian learners of L2 Japanese. New Sounds 2019: the 9th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, Tokyo, Japan.
- (June 2019). (Co-authored with Aaron Albin e Ryoko Hayashi) Development of an L2 Japanese speech corpus for the comparison of prosody across diverse L1 groups. Phonetics and Phonology in Europe (PaPE) 2019, Lecce, Italy.
- (August 2018). (Co-authored with Ryoko Hayashi, Kazuhiro Isomura, Shin Abe, Kumi Kanamura, Tomoko Shibata, Chieko Nakagawa, Aaron Albin, Hiroaki Hatano, Nobuyuki Minematsu, Natsuya Yoshida, Makiko Matsuda) Development of sound archives for learning Japanese prosody. The 2018 International Conference on Japanese Language Education (ICJLE), Venezia, Italy.
- (November 2017). Use of internet and online language tools for teaching reading comprehension to Italian learners of Japanese. TechLING’17 - 2nd International Conference on Language, Linguistics and Technology, Forlì, Italy.
- (September 2017). How to transform a beginning learner into a Japanese character on the theater stage- Pronunciation training aimed at learning comunicative competence - 15th EAJS International Conference 2017, Lisbon, Portugal.
- (December 2016). Engeki to nihongo kyoiku - Itaria de no jissan kara (Performing arts and Japanese language education: Practice in Italy). The 6th Meeting on Retrospect and Prospect of Studies on Japanese Speech and Communication, Hiroshima, Japan.
- (December 2016). (Co-authored with Ryoko Hayashi, Makiko Matsuda, Kazuhiro Isomura, Natsuya Yoshida) Production and reproduction of Japanese pitch-accent by German, Italian, Vietnam, and Swahili speakers. 172nd Meeting Of The Acoustical Society Of America, Honolulu, USA.
- (July 2016). Prosodic transfer in L2 relative prominence distribution:
the case study of Japanese pitch accent roduced by ItalianSystematic
L1-L2 comparison for multiple L1-L2 combinations to predict overall
difficulties in learning Japanese prosody. The 2016 Symposium on
Japanese Language Education, Venezia, Italy.
- (June 2016). Prosodic transfer in L2 relative prominence distribution:
the case study of Japanese pitch accent produced by Italian learners. Speech Prosody 2016. Boston, USA.
- (September 2015). An acoustic study of Japanese pitch accent produced by Italian speakers of L2 Japanese. International Symposium on Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) 2015, Chania, Greece.
- (September 2014). Learning and teaching
L2 Japanese prosody: the case of Italian learners of
Japanese. Workshop on speech communication. University
of Padova.
- (September 2014). (Co-authored with Ryoko Hayashi, Natsuya Yoshida & Kazuhiro Isomura) Production of pitch
accent by Swahili, Italian and German learners of Japanese. Paper presented in the autumn meeting of the
Acoustical Society of Japan.
- (June 2010). Gli italiafoni e i suoni
della lingua giapponese. Convegno Internazionale Nihon-JP
Insegnamento della lingua giapponese e studi giapponesi: didattica
e nuove tecnologie. Rimini.
- (May 2009). (Co-authored with Yukari Hirata) Does the native
language use of duration affect the perception of non-native length
contrasts? Paper presented in
the157th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Portland, USA.
- (June 2006). Evaluation of
Web-based corpora: effects of seed selection and time
interval. Paper presented at LREC 2006, Genova, Italy.
- (July 2005). Automated construction and
evaluation of Japanese Web-based reference corpora. Paper presented at Corpus
Linguistics 2005, Birmingham, UK.
- (November 2004). (Co-authored with Marco Baroni) Retrieving
Japanese specialized terms and corpora from the World Wide Web.
Paper presented in KONVENS 2004,
Vienna, Austria.
- (August 2003). Duration and quality in the
production of the vowel length contrast in L2 English and L2
Japanese. Paper presented at the 15th International Congress of Phonetics Sciences.
Barcelona, Spain.
- (January 2000). The effect of L1 prosodic
patterns on L2 lexical accent realization: Japanese vs.
English. Paper presented at the 74th meeting of the
Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, USA.
- (January 2000). The effect of L1 prosodic
patterns on L2 lexical accent realization: Japanese vs.
English. Paper presented at the 74th meeting of the
Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, Illinois.
- (August 1999). Durational reduction in L2
English produced by Japanese speakers. Paper presented at the
14th International Congress of Phonetics Sciences. San Francisco,
USA.
- (April 1999). (Co-authored with Leah Knightly, Sun-Ah Jun and Terry Au) Overhearing Spanish in childhood:
Does it help adult learners sound better? Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research
in Child Development. Albuquerque, USA.
- (September 1997). Phonology and phonetics of L2
intonation: the case of Japanese English.
Paper presented at the 5th European Speech Conference. Rhodes,
Greece.
- (December 1996). An acoustic analysis of the
high and low plateau of Japanese English.
Paper presented at the 3rd joint meeting of the Acoustical Society
of America and the Acoustical Society of Japan. Honolulu,
USA.
- (November 1996). (Co-authored with Sun-Ah Jun) Focus realization in Japanese
English and Korean English Intonation. Paper presented at the
7th Japanese Korean Linguistic Conference. Los Angeles,
USA.
- (September 1996). A descriptive study of the
/e/~/a/ alternation in Japanese compounding.
Paper presented at the 2nd Kobe Phonology Forum. Kobe, Japan.
- (October 1996). Phrase-final lengthening and
stress-timed shortening effects in the speech of native speakers
and Japanese learners of English. Paper presented at the 4th
International Conference on Spoken Language Processing.
Philadelphia, USA.
- (November 1995). Phrase-final lengthening and
stress-timed shortening effects in the speech of native speakers
and Japanese learners of English. Paper presented at the
130th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. St. Louis,
USA.
Invited talks
- (December 2016). Engeki to nihongo kyoiku - Itaria de no jissan kara (Performing arts and Japanese Language Education: Practice in Italy). The 6th Meeting on Retrospect and Prospect of Studies on Japanese Speech and Communication, Hiroshima, Japan
- (November 2014). Prosodic transfer: Multi-domain acoustic analysis of L2 Japanese-L1 English speech. Journées d'étude LECSeL (workshop on linguistics). Universtià di Paris
- (April 2014). "Prosodic Transfer: An Acoustic Study of L2 English and L2 Japanese". Linguistics Seminar. Università di Padova. 24 Aprile, 2013.
Other research-related activities
- Member: Associazione Italiana Didattica Lingua Giapponese (AIDLG), Associazione Italiana per gli Studi Giapponesi (AISTUGIA); Associazione Italiana Scienze delle Voce (AISV), Association of Japanese Language Teachers in Europe (AJE), International Speech Communication Association (ISCA), Phonetic Society of Japan.
- Reviewer: Behavioral Sciences (2022); Languages (2022); Tabula (2021); Languages in Contrast (2004, 2005); Journal of Applied Psycholinguistics (2003); Journal of Phonetics (1999); Developmental Psychology (1998); Issues in Applied Linguistics (1995)
- Member of the scientific committee of the conferences: International Conference on Speech Prosody (Leiden, Nederlands 2024; Tokyo, Japan, 2020); Symposium of the Association of Japanese Language Teachers in Europe/AJE (Ghent, Belgium, 2020; Beograd, Serbia, 2019; Venezia, Italy 2018; Lisbon, Portugal, 2017; Venezia, Italy, 2016); From sound to gesture/S2G (Padova, Italy, 2014)
- Co-organizer: Special session "Acquisition of Interactive Emotional / Social Affective Prosody" of the "10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020" (Tokyo, Japan, 2020); Cultural event series "La primavera dell'arte orientale" (Forlì, Italy, 2019); Conference "Construction of digital resrouces for leaning Japanese" (Forlì, Italy, 2015)
Working experience
- (October 2014). Translate an interview with Jun Takahashi, designer of the Nike X Undercover Gyakusou collection series (Sartoria Comunicazione)
- (July-August 2013). Translate essays, curriculum vitae, dedications and other materials from Italian to Japanese. (Philharmonic Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna)
- (Februrary 2013). Subtitle the film "Il Caso Mattei" by Francesco Rosi, L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, Gucci, The Film Foundation
- (September 2012). Subtitle the film "Le Amiche" by Michelangelo Antonioni, L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, Gucci, The Film Foundation
- (July 2012). Subtitle the film "Senso" by Luchino Visconti in Japanese, L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, Gucci, The Film Foundation• (October 2007). Translate Japanese technical documents in Italian, Zobele Holding
- (February 2003). Translate Japanese technical documents in Italian, Lexis
- (March 2001-October 2001). Work as a linguistic testing engineer in Natural Language Group at Microsoft Corporation, Redmond WA
- (December 2000-February 2001). Conduct accent labeling of Japanese on-line dictionary for speech recognition/synthesis, Conversay, Redmond WA
- (July 1999). Assist editing UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 97 for Dr. Patricia Keating
- (April 1999). Conduct prosodic labeling of Japanese read speech corpus. Bell Labs Annotated Japanese Speech Database project. (Lucent Technologies, Language Modeling Research Department)
- (March 1999). Edit Japanese documents for the TIMSS-R video study project directed by Dr. James Stigler
- (June 1998). Collect speech data for the development of a Japanese text-to-speech system for Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies, Language Modeling Research Department)
- (June 1998). Assist statistical analysis for Dr. Frances Butler, School of Education, UCLA
- (May-July 1998). Conduct acoustic analysis for Dr. Terry Au, Dept. of Psychology, UCLA
- (July 1996). Conduct acoustic analysis for Dr. Patricia Keating, Dept. of Linguistics, UCLA
- (June 1996). Conduct acoustic analysis for Dr. Terry Au, Dept. of Psychology, UCLA
- (1995-96). Computer Laboratory Manager for the UCLA Phonetics Lab
- (1994). Evaluate oral proficiency of American learners of Japanese for the CIBER program directed by Dr. Russell Campbell
