Tomiko Narahara

After many years as specialist in Japanese linguistics and Japanese-language program director, Narahara retired in 2006. As the program director, Narahara worked with great diligence to raise the level of competence among language instructors, develop a more effective curriculum, and motivate a greater number of undergraduate students to study Japanese. As a scholar, Narahara was primarily concerned with Japanese syntax, concentrating on the Japanese copula. Praised as an innovative study by leading Japanese linguists, her book, The Japanese Copula: Forms and Function (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)