Olga Yokoyama

Olga Tsuneko Yokoyama (Russian Ольга Борисовна Йокояма, born September 11, 1942) is a Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research interests include topics in Slavic philology, functionalist constraints in the syntax, word order and intonation of Russian.

Life and career In 1970 Yokoyama received her D.D.S. (Doctor of Dental Science) degree from Tokyo Medical and Dental University. Then she received two M.A. degrees in Slavic linguistics and literature: in 1972 from the University of Illinois and in 1974 from Harvard University where she was one of the students of Roman Jakobson and Susumu Kuno and stayed there to complete her Ph.D. in Slavic Linguistics in 1979.

Yokoyama's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the DAAD-ACLS German-American Commission, and the Modern Humanities Research Association, among others. knowledge: Knowledge of the code (lexicon and grammar of the language) Knowledge of the discourse situation (assessment of the knowledge set of the conversation partner B) Five kinds of informational knowledge: Referential knowledge – the ability to connect linguistic representation to term. The sentence “I spoke to Jane Smith” is evidence for the fact that A has referential knowledge of Jane Smith. Propositional knowledge – knowledge that some event happened. Specificational knowledge – enables the speaker to replace an unspecified term with a specified term. Existential knowledge – the assumption that that person or place does exist; however there is no specificational knowledge of this person or a place. Predicational knowledge – presupposed by the question “What happened?” and connected to propositional knowledge “Something happened”. It implies predicative and existential knowledge of the terms. In addition, Yokoyama proposes four minimal units of the discourse model: which represent an invaluable primary source for studying dialectal speech typical of the Vyatka region in the second half of the 19th century.

Most of the letters were addressed to Yokoyama's grandfather Vasiliy Zhernakov, who in 1881, at the age of 17, left home in the former Vyatka Province for Siberia to earn money and eventually became a successful merchant and philanthropist. Yokoyama recognized that this is a valuable source for studying the language and economic conditions of common people in Russia in the late 19th century.

The first volume contains original facsimiles of the letters with comments on phonological and orthographic variations; and their translation into modern Russian with comments on grammar and meaning of some words. The second volume provides the English translation of these letters with practical cultural comments, explaining different farming terms or relationships within the family. However, historiographers may find the historical part of research incomplete, but still a valuable source for research on life of Russian peasants in the 19th century.

Books authored Source: 1980 Studies in Russian Functional Syntax (Harvard Studies in Syntax and Semantics III, Part II). Harvard University Linguistics Department: Cambridge, MA. 328 pp. 1986 Discourse and Word Order. Benjamins: Amsterdam-Philadelphia. 361 pp. 2008 Russian Peasant Letters: Texts and Contexts. 2 vols. Verlag Otto Harrassowitz: . 983 pp.

Books edited Source: 1990 Harvard Studies in Slavic Linguistics, vol. 1. Slavic Linguistics Colloquium: . 360 pp. 1993 Harvard Studies in Slavic Linguistics, vol. 2. Slavic Linguistics Colloquium: . 265 pp. 1995 Harvard Studies in Slavic Linguistics, vol. 3. Slavic Linguistics Colloquium: . 242 pp.

Articles Source: 1981 “On sentence-coordination in Russian: a functional approach” in Papers from the Seventeenth Regional Meeting. Linguistic Society, Chicago, 431-439. 1983 “V zaščitu zapretnyx deepričastij (The case for dangling participles)”, in M.S. Flier (ed.), American Contributions to the Ninth International Congress of Slavists, vol. I, Linguistics. Slavica, Columbus, OH, 373-381. 1986a “Lexical frequency and its implications: the case of Contemporary Edited Russian”. Slavic and East European Journal 30.2, 147-166. 1988a “Disbelief, lies, and manipulations in a Transactional Discourse Model”, in H. Parret (ed.), Rhetoric of Lying (Argumentation 2.1), 131-149. 1991b “Shifters and non-verbal categories of Russian”, in L.R. Waugh & S. Rudy (eds.), New Vistas in Grammar: Invariance and Variation (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 49). Benjamins, Amsterdam-Philadelphia, 363-386. 1999b “Russian genderlects and referential expressions”, Language in Society 28, 401-429. 2000b “Èmpatija v ramkax transakcionnoj modeli diskursa (Empathy in the Transactional Discourse Model)”, in L.P. Krysin (ed.). Russkij jazyk segodnja, Azbukovnik, 276-286. 2001 “Neutral and Non-Neutral Intonation in Russian: A Reinterpretation of the IK System”. Die Welt der Slaven XLVI.1, 1-26. 2002b “Markirovannost’ t.n. nejtral’noj intonacii: po dannym detskoj reči (The markedness of so-called neutral intonation: evidence from child language).” Problemy fonetiki IV, 148-157. 2003b “Speech genre differences in the fundamental frequency of Russian men and women”, in J. van Leeuwen-Turnovcová & U. Röhrborn (eds.), Beiträge des Gender-Blocks zum XIII. Internationalen Slavistenkongress in Verlag Otto Sagner, München, 7-28. 2003e “Intonacija kak sredstvo xarakteristiki kommunikativnogo modusa povestvovanija v zoščenkovskom tekste (Intonation as means of characterization in the narrative communicative mode in texts by Zoščenko)”. Russkij jazyk v naučnom osveščenii 2003.6, 127-143. 2006a “Word order in spoken discourse”, in K. Brown (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., vol. 12. Elsevier Science, Oxford, 88-95. 2011b “Gender v pis’max krest’jan 19-go veka (Gender in 19th century peasant letters)”, in Regina Nohejl, Friderike Karl, & Elisabeth Cheauré (eds.), Konstrukty nacional'noj identičnosti v russkoj kul’ture: vtoraja polovina XIX stoletija - Serebrjanyj vek. RGGU Univ. Press, Moscow, 141-152. 2013 “Sentential Stress in written texts: evidence from literary and dialectal Russian”. Phonological Studies 16, 109-115. 2014b “The use of the ‘polite vy’ in Russian: a pragmatic change in progress”, in M.S. Flier, D.J. Birnbaum, & C.M. Vakareliyska (eds.), Philology Broad and Deep: In Memoriam Horace G. Lunt. Slavica, Bloomington IN, 341-361.