Profiles

Professor ABE Hiroshi

Affiliations :

French linguistics: micro and macro

I was really happy to find my name on the list of those who passed the entrance exams. But several days later I was informed that as a part of admission formalities I had to select another foreign language to study in addition to English. I chose French without giving it much thought and afterwards studied it in a rather sloppy fashion. Nevertheless, French became my lifelong research subject.
What can you investigate about literature besides the creation process? As an undergraduate student I had no clue how to answer that question. Ultimately I chose language studies as a theme of my graduation thesis by scrupulously eliminating other options. I continued to study as a graduate student, even though I could not shake off the sense of defeat. But I might have had some innate propensity both for research and linguistics, after all.
To study language means to temporarily put aside traditional and standard grammar, and to uncover still unexplained rules through the analysis of specific data. This process brings together the micro and macro levels, and ultimately leads to the destruction of stereotypes.
After doing research for some thirty years, I have developed a habit of taking the same approach to my daily life. There is no place for boredom in my micro-worlds, whether I am talking with students, executing my routine work duties, or meeting people from outside the university. To my unbiased gaze, the world appears as a wonderful forest full of mysteries, surprises and discoveries.

  • Research, History
  • Books, papers, etc.
  • Courses
    General education: Introduction to French
    French Linguistics (Advanced Seminar); French Linguistics (Seminar); French Linguistics (General Lecture)
    Personal History
    I specialize in French linguistics, comparative linguistics (Japanese, French, and English), general linguistics, Saussurean studies, etc.

    Received an M.A. in French literature at the Graduate School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University
    Completed the doctoral program in French literature at the Graduate School of Humanities, Gakushuin University
    Received a Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University

    Career:
    Full-time Lecturer, College of General Education, Tohoku University
    Assistant Professor, Faculty of Language and Culture, Tohoku University
    Current position
    Degree
    Ph.D. (Information Science)
    Field
    Subjectivity in language; external cognition and meaning; deixis; free indirect speech; narrative structure in fiction; metaphors; history of French, English and Japanese languages; etc.
    Research Subject
    Intervention of subjectivity in Japanese, French and English sentences without information;
    Desirability and subjectivity in language;
    Contrastive analysis of temporal and spatial deixis in French and Japanese novels;
    Free indirect speech and fictional speech acts;
    Grammaticalization of spatial concepts; etc.
    Keywords
    Subjectivity; desirability; grammaticalization; cognitive semantics; deixis; speech representation; speech act
    Affiliation
    Japanese Society of French Linguistics (editorial board member); French Linguistic and Literary Society of Japan (manager of the Tohoku branch); Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association; French Language Education Society of Japan (Societe Japonaise de Didactique du Francais); Société de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes; European Association for Japanese Studies
    Database of Researchers Information
    http://db.tohoku.ac.jp/whois/detail/f62677306a8501ac9ebea1a3e82d39d6.html
  • Books
    『記号を読む―言語・文化・社会―』、東北大学出版会、2001(co-editor)
    エミール・バンヴェニスト『言葉と主体』、岩波書店、2013 (translation supervisor)
    『言葉に心の声を聞く ―印欧語・ソシュール・主観性―』、東北大出版会、2015
    『自由間接話法とは何か 文学と言語学のクロスロード』、ひつじ書房、2017(joint authroship)
    Academic Papers
    「川口氏の「スーパー・プレディケート」仮説について」、『藝文研究』(慶應義塾大学文学部)第103号、2012、228-243
    A propos de l'hétérogénéité de la phrase contradictoire en français, Actas del XXXVI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filologiá Románica (Ed. By Casanova, Emili / Calvo, Cesareo), Tome V, De Gryuter, 2013, 323-329
    「過去の語りに潜在する「わたし」・「いま」・「ここ」」、『フランス語学の最前線2・【特集】時制』(春木仁孝・東郷雄二編)、ひつじ書房、2014、401-430
    「フランス語のムードとモダリティ」、『ひつじ意味論講座 第3巻 モダリティI:理論と方法』、ひつじ書房、2014、225-247
    「疑似主体に基づく主観性について ―自由話法の仏日対照を中心に―」、『フランス語学の最前線3・【特集】モダリティ』(川口順二編)、ひつじ書房、2015、329-357
    Awards
    1998 Honourable Mention, French Linguistic and Literary Society of Japan
    News
    Book review on『言葉に心の声を聞く』:「読書文化」、河北新報2015年6月1日版、第19面
    「文学部の研究紹介11・阿部宏教授・フランス語研究から言語学研究へ」、『考えるということ』(a booklet by Graduate School/Faculty of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University)、Vol. 11、2016年11月、13-19