JOINT RESEARCH PROJECTS In addition to their individual research, members of the Institute organize long term projects in cooperation with scholars from outside. The Institute is currently hosting the following projects.Cross-linguistic Studies of Tonal Phenomena (Coordinator: KAJI Shigeki) Tone and its related phenomena of the world's languages are studied from various angles. The topics of study include: physiological and acoustic correlates of tone (pitch); relation between consonant types and tone; tonal system of individual languages; lexical and grammatical functions of tone; difference between tone languages and pitch accent languages; typology of the world's tone languages; diachronic changes and comparative studies of tone; development of tone (tonogenesis) and tone loss. Dynamism of Political Cultures in Africa and Asia(Coordinator: KURIHARA Hirohide) As we entered the 21st century it seems that discourse demanding "globalization" has spread over the global community. There is a claim that a society capable of rewarding individual efforts should be realized through the relaxation of restrictions and fair market competition. In reality, however, none of us have yet succeeded in giving a clear view of the future following the globalization though we can see easily a group of miserable people who have dropped out from the competition. This is the reason why everyone has a feeling of deadlock in and out of Japan. This project will focus on political cultures in Africa and Asia to break the deadlock. Africa and Asia have experienced the standardization called colonization that stemmed from the West since the 19th century and have been showing both kinds of response －conformity and repulsion－ to the globalization going under way. Therefore the aim of this project is to make a relative approach to the generally spreading discourse of globalization and to offer a new paradigm for the creation of cultures of the global community, widely investigating and studying the various kinds of political cultures in Africa and Asia. Six research groups with the following themes have been set up to attain the above aim of the project: "Formation of the Modern State Institution", "Nationalism and Internationalism", "the Mechanism of Multi-Ethnic Integration in Comparative Perspective", "Language Community and Language Policy", "Human flow and Border Crossing" and "State, Religion and Civil Society". By these means it might be possible to clear up the formation process of the various political cultures in Africa and Asia, to study the competing relations between uniformity and diversity around the state as their core, and to grasp the current situation of the various kinds of movements or organizations acting outside the framework of state.Studies on Linguistic and Cultural Contacts (Coordinator: NAKAJIMA Motoki) This project addresses the question of what China is from the perspective of linguistics. China is not an ethnic and cultural monolith. It examines the languages of China such as Manchu, Mongolian, Chinese, Uighur, Bai and so forth, the peoples who speak them, their social and geographical circumstances, their cultural and historical backgrounds, the structures of their languages and writing systems, and the range of their dialects and inter-relations with other languages. 5
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