Motoki Saito

斎藤幹樹 (Motoki SAITO), M.A.

• Research Interests and current project

“a serendipity teacher” vs “a pact bren“.
Which do you feel more acceptable for an English word?

My research interests are mainly in the comprehension process of language and the relationship between corpus frequency and acceptability given to linguistic expressions. Acceptability judgment seems to contribute a part of the comprehension process of language in general. Does it show the same characteristics as lexical decision task? What is shared and what is different? What aspects of the comprehension process does the difference suggest? Moreover, while it has been widely accepted that frequency (counts in text corpora) is a good predictor for acceptability, it is known that it does not work well for the words in a lower band of frequency or even made-up words. The two examples above are both made-up nonsense words, but it seems there is difference in acceptability. What causes this asymmetry of acceptability? More generally, how do you understand the words that are new to you? These are my main interests.

I am approaching this question using experimental methods in psycholinguistics. My current project focuses on the role of subschemas in the comprehension process, and I am doing some experiments to estimate the subschemas’ influence.

• Contact Information
  • motokisaito.8623@gmail.com

• Affiliation
  • Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan.

• Education
  • 2017/06-2017/11
    • The University of Tübingen, Germany; A visiting Ph.D. student.
  • 2016/11-2017/01
    • The University of Sheffield, the UK; A visiting post-graduate researcher.
  • 2015-present
    • Kyoto University, Japan; PhD candidate (Linguistics).
  • 2013-2015
    • Kyoto University, Japan; MA (Linguistics) in March 2015.
  • 2009-2013
    • Waseda University, Japan; BA (Law) in March 2013.

• Awards, Scholarships, and Grants
  • 2017-2018:
    • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant
      • 900,000JPY/year
  • 2016-2017:
    • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant
      • 1,000,000JPY/year
  • 2016-2018:
    • Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Research Fellowship for Young Scientists (DC2)
      • 200,000JPY/month
  • 2015:
    • Outstanding Presentation Awards at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society.
  • 2015:
    • Research Grant for Presentation at International Conference. The Kyoto University Foundation.
      • 350,000JPY

• Computer Skills
  • Advanced: R, LaTeX
  • Basic: python

• Languages
  • Japanese (Native)
  • English (Advanced)
  • German (Intermediate)
  • Chinese (Basic)

• Recent works
  • Articles
    • Saito, Motoki. 2016. “Statistical Assessment of the Effect of Semantic Concreteness on Acceptability Judgment.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association, Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association, Vol.16, pp.562-567. (Written in Japanese, refereed)
    • Saito, Motoki. 2016. “Which affects more on acceptability judgment, individual words or constructional subschemas?” Papers in Linguistic Science, Kyoto University, Vol.21, pp.37-57. (Written in Japanese, non-refereed)
    • Saito, Motoki. 2015. “Statistical Evaluation of the Effect of Constructional Subschemas on Acceptability Judgment.” Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of Japanese Cognitive Science Society, Japanese Cognitive Science Society, pp.1-8. (Written in Japanese, refereed)

• • Presentations
    • Saito, Motoki. 2016. “Language, linguistic knowledge, and linguistic ability: Similar but different technical concepts that illuminate different assumptions about language” Presented at the workshop “What is necessary to make invisible language visible?”, the 17th Annual Meeting of Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan. (Talked in Japanese)
    • Saito, Motoki. 2015. “Statistical Evaluation of the effect of Constructional Subschemas on Acceptability Judgment.” Presented at the 32th Annual Meeting of Japanese Cognitive Science Society, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan. (Talked in Japanese)
    • Saito, Motoki. 2015. “Statistical Assessment of the Effect of Semantic Concreteness on Acceptability Judgment.” Presented at the workshop “Exploration into the possibility of Methodological Research in Cognitive Linguistics: With Examples of Linguistic Methodological Studies”, the 16th Annual Meeting of Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. (Talked in Japanese)
    • Saito, Motoki. 2015. “The Effect of Constructional Subschemas on Acceptability/Grammaticality Judgment.” Presented at the 13th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. (Talked in English)

• • Dissertations
    • Saito, Motoki. 2015. Cognitive Factors Affecting Acceptability Judgment: From the perspective of Cognitive Grammar. M.A. dissertation, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. (Written in Japanese)
    • Saito, Motoki. 2013. Unified Cognitive Activation Model. Thesis submitted for the Minor Degree of Language and Speech Science, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. (Written in English)

For more information, please visit my webpages of ResearchGate or Academia.edu.