Kitahara, Hisatsugu

Hisatsugu Kitahara is Professor at the Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, Keio University, Japan. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard University in 1994. Since then, he has been teaching and holding research positions at various institutions, including Princeton University, the University of British Columbia, MIT, and the University of Michigan. His expertise resides in theoretical linguistics, more specifically in minimalist syntax. His work addresses fundamental issues regarding the nature of phrase structure. He published Elementary Operations and Optimal Derivations (MIT Press 1997) and four co-authored books: A Derivational Approach to Syntactic Relations (Oxford 1998), Explorations in Maximizing Syntactic Minimization (Routledge 2015), A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge (Routledge 2021), and Merge and the Strong Minimalist Thesis (Cambridge 2023). His research also appeared in such journals as Syntax: A Journal of Theoretical, Experimental and Interdisciplinary Research (Wiley-Blackwell) and Linguistic Inquiry (MIT Press). Early Background Born in Musashino-shi, Tokyo, Japan on March 22, 1965. Attended public school in Kokubunji-shi, Tokyo, Japan. Studied at Meiji Gakuin Higashimurayama High School in Tokyo and at Jenison High School in Michigan as an exchange student. Entered Meiji Gakuin University in 1984.

• Theoretical Linguistics
• /Generative Grammar
• /Syntactic Theory

Linguistics