Father of Modern Japanese Linguistics, Longtime Faculty Member Dies

March 30, 2009

Widely regarded as “the father of modern Japanese linguistics,” Sige-Yuki Kuroda, professor emeritus and research professor of linguistics at UCSD, died in La Jolla on Feb. 25, after a long illness. 

Yuki Kuroda

Kuroda, who was known almost universally as “Yuki,” taught at UCSD from 1966 until his retirement in 1994. The department held a tribute March 17, which was attended by friends and colleagues from around the country. The department has also started a website in his honor, featuring remembrances and a video of the memorial event.

Kuroda’s 1965 MIT dissertation, “Generative Studies in the Japanese Language,” written under the direction of Noam Chomsky, provided the seeds of theoretical studies of Japanese that continue to have an impact today, said John Moore, chair of the linguistics department.

Kuroda was motivated, Moore said, by a desire to use Japanese to illuminate the universality of human language, and his work had an impact far beyond the realm of Japanese linguistics. He showed that not only could Japanese be fruitfully analyzed using the theory of generative grammar — an influential, sometimes controversial, theory developed by Chomsky and his students in the 1950s and ’60s — but that it could play an important role in extending and expanding that theory.

 “Yuki Kuroda was a researcher with an enormous international reputation,” said UCSD linguistics professor Grant Goodall. “He was also one of the first members of the linguistics department here, which meant that his own career was intertwined with the rise of UCSD as a major center for research in the language sciences.” 

Kuroda was born in 1934 into a prominent academic family in Japan. He received bachelor's degrees in mathematics and linguistics from the University of Tokyo and a master's degree in mathematics from Nagoya University.  He pursued a doctorate in the linguistics department at MIT and was a member of its first graduating class in 1965. He joined UCSD the following year. After his 28-year tenure at UCSD, he accepted a position at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, in 1995 and retired from there in 1998. 

He held visiting positions at universities in Japan, France, Spain and the Netherlands. He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto and the International Institute of Advanced Studies in Kyoto. He was also honored as a Guggenheim Fellow and as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Kuroda is survived by his wife, Susan Fischer, and by three brothers and other family members in Japan. 

Those wishing to honor his memory may make a contribution to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco or to any progressive cause of the donor's choice.