HOME > Faculty Members > Matej Vrbovsky

Faculty Members

Matej Vrbovsky, Ph.D. (Associate Professor) [KUID]

Biography

I was born in Czechoslovakia in 1987 and grew up in Slovakia. In 2022, I completed the doctoral programme at the Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University, earning a Ph.D. in Japanese Language and Culture. After serving as Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at the Center for Japanese Language and Culture, Osaka University, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Contemporary Business, Faculty of Economics and Management, International Pacific University, I joined the Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University, as Associate Professor with responsibility for international student support in 2026.

Research Interests

Japanese linguistics, pragmatics, relevance theory

My research focuses on pragmatics, particularly the relationship between Japanese grammatical forms and utterance interpretation from the perspective of relevance theory. I am especially interested in Japanese sentence-final expressions and how speakers’ and hearers’ knowledge, beliefs, and intentions shape the choice and interpretation of linguistic expressions. More recently, I have extended my research to the metalinguistic abilities of generative AI. By examining its judgements about linguistic forms and its actual use of them, I explore the relationship between human language understanding and language processing in generative AI. In my lectures, I draw on research in pragmatics and sociolinguistics to explore everyday Japanese expressions, how they are interpreted, and the social and cultural contexts of language use. My seminars focus on politeness expressions and strategies in Japanese, examining how language use relates to interpersonal relationships, society, and culture. In both, I encourage students to begin with familiar linguistic phenomena, question what we take for granted in everyday life, and connect theoretical perspectives with concrete examples.

Selected Publications

• “The (Non-)Use of Epistemic Modality Forms by Generative AI: Changes Across ChatGPT Model Updates.” Matani Ronshu, 20, pp. 25–45, 2026.
• “The Function of the Sentence-Final Particle Wa in Utterance Interpretation.” Studies in Japanese Language and Culture, 32, pp. 138–152, 2022.
• “The Sentence-Final Expression Slot Hypothesis: How Should the Syntactic Positions of Sentence-Final Particles Be Understood?” Matani Ronshu, 16, pp. 105–115, 2022.
• “The Function of the Sentence-Final Particle Ze in Utterance Interpretation.” Studies in Japanese Language and Culture, 31, pp. 146–160, 2021.