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Masato Kobayashi

Associate Professor, Linguistics

Prof. Kobayashi's research is concerned with the question of how the grammar and phonemes change over time in the languages of South Asia, especially the Sanskrit language of the Vedas and the language of the Dravidian minority ethnic group. Though the language of present day India and Pakistan is said to “change every ten kilometers,” various, the large majority of these languages can be seen as various from the prototype of the Indo-Aryan language and the Dravidian language. For the Indo-Aryan language, the process of development is chiefly examined by researching the documents available from various eras. As far as the Dravidian language is concerned, because the language in the surviving old documents is not necessarily that old, it is necessary to directly inquire with the minority ethnic groups, and aims to clarify the process of differentiation that retains the grammar and the vocabulary while also gathering information on the orally-transmitted literature and artistic skills etc.

Link to page in web pages of UTokyo Faculty of Letters, including full CV and list of publications [2015/01/30]