Hajime Hoji

Hajime Hoji is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern California (USC), specializing in Language Faculty Science through an internalist approach. His research bridges linguistics with the scientific method, emphasizing definite predictions, experimental validation, and universal reproducibility.

• Education: Ph.D. in Linguistics, University of Washington (1985).
• Key Publications: Language Faculty Science (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The Theory and Practice of Language Faculty Science (De Gruyter Mouton, 2022).

Research Focus:
Hoji’s work centers on studying the language faculty as a cognitive system using the Guess-Compute-Compare method inspired by Richard Feynman. He prioritizes rigorous testability, replication, and exceptionless experimental results, particularly in Japanese syntax (anaphora, scope dependency, c-command effects).

Collaborations: Co-edited volumes with Daniel Plesniak and Yukinori Takubo, extending his research to cross-linguistic analysis (English, Korean, Mandarin).

Methodological Contributions:
Developed self-experimentation and non-researcher-informant experiments to validate hypotheses about formal dependencies and grammatical structures. His framework challenges traditional compatibility-seeking linguistic approaches.