Biography

Hikaru Hotta is a doctoral assistant who joined the Institute of English Studies in September 2023.
Prior to coming to Neuchâtel, he earned a BA in Language Education from International Christian University and an MA in Linguistics from the University of Tokyo. From September to November 2026, he will be working on a Doc.Mobility research project at the University of Antwerp.

His dissertation presents a corpus-based investigation of lexical biases in English morphosyntactic alternations using Bayesian multilevel modeling.

Teaching

English Linguistics Workshop (Since Autumn 2025).

Publications

2026c. From reported thought to epistemic modality: a corpus-based study on the sentence-final particle kana with omou ‘think’ in Japanese. Journal of Japanese Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1515/jjl-2026-3003

2026b. Modeling lexical biases in morphosyntactic alternations: aligning usage-based theory with multilevel/hierarchical models. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistics Theory. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2026-0013

2026a. With Akiko Fujii, Danni Shi, & Yasunori Morishima. L1 visual support in L2 academic listening: Implications for the strategic use of L1 on lecture slides in EMI contexts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2025.101626

2025c. With Martin Hilpert. English comparative constructions at different levels of schematicity: what is the role of adjective-specific variability? Cognitive Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2025-0025

2025b. With Tomoko Endo. Reanalyzing “to omou” ‘I think’ Construction: A Corpus-Based Study of Natural Japanese Conversation. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 31. 389–398. https://doi.org/10.5070/J7.48961

2025a. Frequency does not predict the processing speed of multi-morpheme sequences in Japanese. Linguistics Vanguard. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2024-0083

Conferences

June 2026. Modeling lexical biases in morphosyntactic alternations: aligning usage-based theory with hierarchical/multilevel models. 14th International Conference on Construction Grammar. Princeton, USA.

Aug 2025. With Martin Hilpert. Variation and isomorphism in the English comparative alternation. Societas Linguistica Europaea. Bordeaux, France.

March 2025. English comparative constructions at different levels of schematicity: What is the role of adjective-specific variability? Swiss Works in English Language and Linguistics. Bern, Switzerland.

Nov 2024. With Tomoko Endo. Reanalyzing the “to omou” ‘I think’ construction: A corpus-based study of natural Japanese conversation. Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference. Melbourne, Australia.

Aug 2024. Rethinking the Principle of No Synonymy from the perspective of intra-speaker variation. International Conference on Construction Grammar. Göteborg, Sweden.

April 2024. A lexical construction across a clausal boundary: an analysis of the Japanese self-quotative construction kana to omou. Challenging Construction Grammar: New insights from Morphology. Monte Verità, Switzerland.

Aug 2023. Psycholinguistic evidence against frequency effects for multi-morphemic sequences in Japanese. International Cognitive Linguistics Conference. Düsseldorf, Germany.