TUFS Student Wins Society for the Promotion of German Studies in Japan’s Encouragement Award

July 17, 2018

TUFS Doctoral Program student, Mr. Taishi Kobayashi (Graduate School of Global Studies, Language and Culture Studies, third year), has been awarded the 58th Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Germanistik in Japan (Society for the Promotion of German Studies in Japan) Encouragement Award. This award has been bestowed upon impressive papers written by researchers under the age of 36 since the establishment of the society in 1960. Mr. Kobayashi's awarded paper explores the nominalization of verbs in German, and is titled ‘Zur fehlenden Objekt-Lesart von Genitivkomplementen bei Nominalisierungen im Deutschen ― mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der primären und sekundären Kasuszuweisung（Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 24）’.

In the summer of 2015, Mr. Kobayashi attended summer school at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as part of the TUFS Joint Education Program, during which he wrote this paper. The Joint Education Program is a program chosen in 2014 as part of the Top Global University Project, and aims to give TUFS postgraduate students a chance to improve their research skills by sending them to study at partner institutions around the world.

The Award Ceremony was held on Saturday the 26th of May at a venue in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

Mr. Kobayashi’s Thoughts on Winning

I feel extremely honored to have been awarded the prestigious 58th Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Germanistik in Japan Encouragement Award. I feel greatly indebted to my research advisor, Professor Yasuhiro Fujinawa, and all of the people who have supported me along the way. In addition, I am grateful to the TUFS Education Program, the supporting program behind the summer school at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Sommerschule zur germanistischen Linguistik), without which this paper would not have come to fruition. I would like to thank all those involved in this program.

Currently, I am researching nominalization of verbs in German. Nominalization is a popular topic in linguistic research that has been researched extensively, but my research particularly focuses on the semantic and grammatical characteristics of verbs that are the target of nominalization. I think I can make a significant contribution to the study of verbs, a key part of grammar research, by using nominalization as a means of showing how verbs and nouns differ within grammar.

Winning this award has given me incentive to devote myself even more to my studies in order to move forward with my research.