Junko Itō

Junko Itō is a Japanese-born American linguist. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1986 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the supervision of Alan Prince. She is currently a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she served as chair of the department from 1999-2006.
Itō's research focuses on phonology and morphology. She is primarily known for her work on syllable structure within an optimality theoretic framework. Her work has addressed the phonology of the Japanese language, including the rendaku phenomenon. Her work has been published in Linguistic Inquiry amongst other peer-reviewed research journals in linguistics. She often collaborates with her UCSC colleague and husband Armin Mester.
She is the daughter of mathematician Kiyoshi Itō.

2015 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. The perfect prosodic word in Danish. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 38(1). 5-36.

2015 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Sino-Japanese Phonology. Chapter 7 of Handbook of Japanese Phonetics and Phonology. 2015. ed. by H. Kubozono. pp. 289–312.

2015 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Word Formation and Phonological Processes. Chapter 9 of Handbook of Japanese Phonetics and Phonology. 2015. ed. by H. Kubozono. pp. 363–395. Mouton de Gruyter Series Handbooks of Japanese Language and Linguistics.

2013 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Prosodic Subcategories in Japanese. Lingua 124. 20-40.

2012 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Recursive prosodic phrasing in Japanese. In: Borowsky, Toni, Shigeto Kawahara, Mariko Sugahara, and Takahito Shinya, eds. 2012. Prosody Matters. Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Selkirk. Advances in Optimality Theory Series. Elsevier. 280-303.

2011 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. A note on unstressability. NINJAL Project Review. 4. National Institute of Japanese Linguistics. 27-44.

2009 Kobozono, Haruo, Junko Ito, and Armin Mester.Consonant Gemination in Japanese Loanword Phonology In The Linguistic Society of Korea, ed., Current Issues in Unity and Diversity of Languages. Collection of Papers Selected from the 18th International Congress of Linguists [CIL 18]. Dongam Publishing Co., Republic of Korea. 953-973.

2009 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. The extended prosodic word. In Kabak, Baris, and Jaent Grijzenhout, eds. Phonological Domains: Universals and Derivations. The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton de Gruyter. 135-194.

2009 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. The onset of the prosodic word. In Parker, Steve, ed. Phonological Argumentation: Essays on Evidence and Motivation. London: Equinox. 227-260.

2009 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Lexical classes in phonology. In Miyagawa, Shigeru, and Mamoru Saito, eds. Handbook of Japanese Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 84-106.

2007 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Prosodic adjunction in Japanese compounds. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 55: Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics 4. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 97-111.

2006 Bakovic, Eric, Junko Ito, and John McCarthy, eds. Wondering at the Natural Fecundity of Things: Essays in Honor of Alan Prince. California Digital Library eScholarship Repository. Linguistic Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.

2006 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Indulgentia Parentum Filiorum Pernicies: Lexical Allomorphy in Latin and Japanese. In: Bakovic, Eric, Junko Ito, and John McCarthy, eds. 2006. Wondering at the Natural Fecundity of Things: Essays in Honor of Alan Prince. BookSurge Publishing, pp. 185–194. eScholarship Depository of the California Digital Library.

2006 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Systemic markedness and faithfulness. In J. Cihlar, A. Franklin, D. Kaiser and I. Kimbara, eds. Proceedings of the 39th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. Chicago, Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago. 665-689.

2004 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Morphological contrast and merger: ranuki in Japanese. Journal of Japanese Linguistics 20. 1-18. 2003 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Japanese Morphophonemics: Markedness and Word Structure. MIT Press Linguistic Inquiry Monograph Series 41. Cambridge, Mass.

2003 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Weak Layering and Word Binarity. In Honma, Takeru, Masao Okazaki, Toshiyuki Tabata and Shin-ichi Tanaka, eds. A New Century of Phonology and Phonological Theory. A Festschrift for Professor Shosuke Haraguchi on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday. 26-65.

2003 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Lexical and postlexical phonology in Optimality Theory: evidence from Japanese. Linguistische Berichte. Sonderheft 11: Resolving Conflicts in Grammars. Ed. by Fanselow, Gisbert, and Caroline Féry. 183-207.

2003 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. On the sources of opacity in OT: coda processes in German. In Féry, Caroline, and Ruben van de Vijver, eds. The Syllable in Optimality Theory, Cambridge University Press. 271-303.

2002 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. One phonology or many? Issues in stratal faithfulness theory. In The Phonological Society of Japan, ed. Phonological Studies 5. Tokyo: Kaitakusha. 121-126. 2001 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Structure preservation and stratal opacity in German. In Lombardi, Linda, ed. Segmental Phonology in Optimality Theory, Cambridge University Press. 261-295.

2001Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Covert generalizations in Optimality Theory: the role of stratal faithfulness constraints. In The Phonology-Morphology Circle of Korea, ed. Proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on Phonology and Morphology. 3-33.

2001 Ito, Junko, Armin Mester, and Jaye Padgett. Alternations and distributional patterns in Japanese Phonology. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan. 5.2. 54-60.

2000 Ito, Junko and Armin Mester. Ich, der ich sechzig bin: An Agreement Puzzle, in Chung, Sandy, Jim McCloskey, and Nathan Sanders, eds. Jorge Hankamer Webfest. http://ling.ucsc.edu/Jorge/ito_mester.html.

1999 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. The structure of the phonological lexicon. In Tsujimura, Natsuko, ed. The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics. Malden, MA, and Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishers. 62-100.

1999 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Realignment. In R. Kager, H. v.d. Hulst, and W.Zonneveld, eds. The Prosody-Morphology Interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 188-217.

1998 Kubozono, Haruo, Junko Ito, and Armin Mester. Nonfinality in Japanese Phonology. Proceedings of the XVIth Congrès International des Linguistes, Paris. Elsevier.

1997 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Sympathy Theory and German truncations. In Miglio, Viola, and Bruce Morén, eds., University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 5. Selected phonology papers from Hopkins Optimality Theory Workshop 1997/University of Maryland Mayfest 1997. 117-139. Also in: On'in kenkyuu [Phonological Studies], ed. by the Phonological Society of Japan. Kaitakusha, Tokyo. 1998. 51-66.

1997 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Featural Sympathy: feeding & counterfeeding interactions in Japanese. In Karvonen, Daniel, Motoko Katayama, and Rachel Walker, eds. Phonology at Santa Cruz (PASC) Vol. 5. 29-36.

1997 Ito, Junko, Haruo Kubozono, and Armin Mester. On'inkôzô-kara mita go-to ku-no kyôkai: fukugô-meishi akusento-no bunseki [The word/phrase boundary from the perspective of phonological structure: the analysis of nominal compound accent]. In Spoken Language Research Group, ed. Bunpô-to onsei. Speech and Grammar. Tokyo: Kurosio Publications. 147-166.

1997 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Correspondence and compositionality: The ga-gyô variation in Japanese phonology. In Roca, Iggy, ed., Constraints and Derivations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 419-462.

1996 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Stem and word in Sino-Japanese. In Otake, Takashi, and Ann Cutler, eds. Phonological Structure and Language Processing: Cross-Linguistic Studies, Speech Research Series. Vol. 12. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.13-44.

1996 Ito, Junko, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, and Armin Mester. Prosodic faithfulness and correspondence. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 5. 217-294. 1995 Ito, Junko, Armin Mester, and Jaye Padgett. Licensing and redundancy: underspecification in Optimality Theory. Linguistic Inquiry 26. 571-614.

1995 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. The core-periphery structure of the lexicon and constraints on reranking. In Beckman, Jill, Suzanne Urbanczyk, and Laura Walsh, eds. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics [UMOP] Vol. 18: Papers in Optimality Theory. University of Massachusetts, Amherst: GLSA. 181-209.

1995 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Japanese phonology. In Goldsmith, John, ed.,The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Blackwell. 817-838. 1994 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Reflections on CodaCond and Alignment. In Merchant, Jason, Jaye Padgett, and Rachel Walker, eds., Phonology at Santa Cruz [PASC], Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz, Vol. 3. 27-46.

1993 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Licensed segments and safe paths. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 38. 197-213. 1992 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Weak Layering and Word Binarity. Linguistic Research Center, LRC-92-09, University of California, Santa Cruz. [A slightly revised version appeared in Festschrift for Shosuke Haraguchi, 2003.

1990 Ito, Junko. Prosodic Minimality in Japanese, CLS 26-II: Papers from the Parasession on the Syllable in Phonetics and Phonology, 213-239.

1989 Ito, Junko and Jorge Hankamer. Notes on Monosyllabism in Turkish, Phonology at Santa Cruz (PASC) 1. Santa Cruz, 61-69.

1989 Ito, Junko. A Prosodic Theory of Epenthesis, Natural Language and Linguistics Theory 7, 217-260. 1989 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. Feature predictability and feature specification. Language 65. 258-293.

1988 Ito, Junko. Syllable Theory in Prosodic Phonology, Garland Publishing, New York. 1986 Ito, Junko. Head-Movement at PF and LF - The Syntax of Head Internal Relatives, University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics, Amherst, Massachusetts, 109-138.

1986 Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. The phonology of voicing in Japanese: theoretical consequences for morphological accessibility. Linguistic Inquiry 17.1. 49-73. 1985 Ito, Junko. Consonant Loss in Danish and Phonological Theory, Descriptive and Applied Linguistics 18, 109-120.

1984 Ito, Junko. Melodic Dissimilation in Ainu, Linguistic Inquiry 15.3, 505-513.