kasumi takahashi JP EN

Second Language Acquisition · Syntax · Generative Grammar

Kasumi
Takahashi

髙橋 香澄

I study how Japanese-speaking learners of English come to acquire English grammar.

PhD Student (3rd year)
University of Tsukuba, Japan

Portrait of Kasumi Takahashi

About

I am a third-year PhD student at the University of Tsukuba, working on second language acquisition from a generative perspective. My research focuses on syntactic constraints such as the that-trace effect, and asks how the grammars of Japanese learners of English take shape, comparing them with those of native speakers of English.

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Research

  1. Acquisition of the that-trace effect

    Why does “Who do you think that left?” sound wrong, while “Who do you think left?” is fine? I investigate how Japanese-speaking learners of English come to learn this constraint, with attention to the adverb effect and the role of prosody.

  2. Learnability

    I examine how Japanese-speaking learners of English acquire complex English grammar that does not exist in their first language and is not explicitly taught in school, tracing how this knowledge develops.

  3. Experimental methods

    I combine offline tasks such as acceptability judgments with online tasks such as self-paced reading and eye tracking to uncover what second language grammatical knowledge actually looks like.

Selected Publications

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PAPERS

  • Jul 2026 · Peer-reviewed

    Takahashi, K., & Ono, Y. (2026). Syntactic or overloading? Adverbial effects on the processing of that-trace structures in L1 and L2 grammars. In R. Hill et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 50th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 788–799). Cascadilla Press.

  • Apr 2026 · Peer-reviewed

    Takahashi, K., & Ono, Y. (2026). Acquisition of universal constraints by Japanese learners of English: A case of the that-trace effect involving adverbial intervention. In T. Ionin & S. Montrul (Eds.), New Frontiers and Connections in Second Language Acquisition: Selected Proceedings of the 17th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA-17) (pp. 8–32). John Benjamins.

  • Dec 2025 · Peer-reviewed

    Takahashi, K. (2025). Examining the adverb effect in L2 grammar: Anti-locality accounts of the that-trace effect. Tsukuba English Studies, 44, 41–57.

PRESENTATIONS

  • Jun 2026 · Oral · Lisbon, Portugal

    Takahashi, K. Testing the anti-locality constraint in L2 grammar: Re-evaluating adverbial amelioration of the that-trace effect in L2 English. The 35th Annual Conference of the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA 35).

  • Jun 2026 · Poster · Lisbon, Portugal

    Mogushi, R., Fujii, Y., Kato, S., & Takahashi, K. Sensitivity to the subject island constraint and the parasitic gap by Japanese learners of English: Evidence from offline judgments and online processing. EuroSLA 35 Doctoral Workshop.

  • Apr 2026 · Oral · Cambridge, UK

    Takahashi, K., & Mogushi, R. L2 acquisition of parasitic gaps inside subject islands by Japanese learners of English. The 18th Meeting of Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (GASLA 18).

Awards & Funding

Jul 2024
JST SPRING (Support for Pioneering Research Initiated by the Next Generation), University of Tsukuba — Category 1E (Excellent) from FY2026
Mar 2024
Dean’s Award, Graduate School of Business Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba
Mar 2023
Tsukuba Scholarship for Research Encouragement (FY2023), University of Tsukuba

Teaching

Apr 2024 – present
Part-time Lecturer in English, Chiba Faculty of Nursing, Tokyo Healthcare University (English Reading & Writing 1; English Conversation 1)
Apr 2023 – present
Teaching Assistant, University of Tsukuba (English Communication Skills; Reading in Foreign Languages; Foreign Language Education)
2024
Research Assistant, Ono Lab, University of Tsukuba (Feb–Mar, Aug–Sep 2024)

Education, positions, service and more in the full CV →

Contact

For research collaboration or inquiries, please get in touch.

ORCID