The University of Manchester

Graduate Student, Linguistics and English Language

PhD candidate

School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures

Thesis Title: Verbs of Emotion and Impersonals in Old and Middle English: A Diachronic Study in the Syntax-Semantics Interface (working title)

Supervisors: Prof. David Denison
Dr Nuria Yáñez-Bouza

About

I spent my undergraduate years at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, majoring in English (linguistics), with BA in 2003 ("A Study of Impersonal Constructions in Geoffrey Chaucer's _The Canterbury Tales_").  I then entered the University of Tokyo and obtained MA in 2005 ("Impersonal Constructions in Chaucer's English").  After spending three years at the PhD programme of the same university, I moved to the University of Manchester in September 2008 and have been enrolled as a full-time PhD student.

My current research project is supported by ORSAS (Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme) and the Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship and is concerned with the semantic distinctions between Old and Middle English emotion verbs that could occur in impersonal constructions and verbs which are apparently near-synonymous with them but which did not behave impersonally (eg. LICIAN and LUFIAN respectively).

I am running two websites on my specialisation, history of the English language, in English and Japanese.  The English version is originally derived from the Japanese one and is much more abridged, but both sites are regularly updated.

"HEL on the Web" [in English]
http://sites.google.com/site/helontheweb/

"A Gateway to Studying HEL" [in Japanese]
http://www013.upp.so-net.ne.jp/HEL/

I am now working as a Teaching Assistant for the class "Introduction to the History of the English Language".

Contact Information

Email:

Homepage: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/lel/postgraduate-research/current-phd/ayumi_miura/

Address: School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9PL
United Kingdom