Wesley Jacobsen

Wesley Jacobsen is Professor of Japanese Language and Director of the Japanese Language Program in Harvard's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Raised primarily in Japan, he holds a PhD in Linguistics from University of Chicago. His research examines Japanese grammatical concepts including tense, aspect, transitivity, and conditionals.

Jacobsen has authored 'The Transitive Structure of Events in Japanese' and co-edited 'On Japanese and How to Teach It'. He developed pedagogical approaches for teaching complex grammatical concepts and teaches scholarly Japanese reading courses for East Asian studies students.

Research leaves at Japanese institutions including National Language Research Institute and Kyoto University have supported his investigations into temporal semantics and participant structure in Japanese grammar.