Japanese: A Linguistic Introduction is intended to be a college-level reference book on the Japanese language that can also serve as the principal textbook in an introductory course in Japanese linguistics. It explains various linguistic phenomena organized by and in terms of analytical methods developed in the discipline of linguistics. I have endeavored to maintain breadth of scope and intellectual depth sufficient and appropriate for a college course, including discussion of why certain linguistic phenomena are interesting or important and thus continue to be investigated. The targeted readership includes undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in the Japanese language and linguistics, instructors of Japanese, and researchers who wish to survey the field of Japanese linguistics.

To reinforce the reader’s comprehension, exercises and multimedia supplementary materials are available on the book’s website: http://hasegawa.berkeley.edu/Cambridge/introduction.php. Many referenced works are also available online; their URLs are listed in the reference section of the book, although they might cease to exist at any time.

I am deeply indebted to many individuals. First and foremost, I wish to record my gratitude to my students at UC Berkeley, who for more than twenty years have provided inspiration and served as a sounding board. Without them, this book would not have materialized. I am also grateful to those who read earlier versions of the manuscript and offered critical commentary and editorial advice; they include Setsuko Arita, Dante Aurele, Kazue Hata, Yukio Hirose, Christine Jiang, Mika Kizu, Russell Lee-Goldman, Brendan Morley, Gabriel Pellikka, Dennis Ryan, Masaharu Shimada, Mitsuaki Shimojo, Eve Sweetser, Naoaki Wada, and Ikuko Yuasa.