Rate My Professor Nerida Jarkey

Nerida Jarkey serves as Honorary Associate Professor in Japanese Studies within the School of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. She obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics from the University of Sydney in 1991, with her doctoral thesis examining the syntax and semantics of White Hmong. Prior to her position at Sydney, Jarkey taught English and Linguistics at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. She began her academic career at the University of Sydney as a lecturer in Japanese Studies in 1995. In 2003, she was appointed Director of First Year Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, where she contributed to undergraduate education strategies and quality improvement initiatives, including eLearning and transition programs.

Jarkey's research specializes in the semantics of grammar, particularly serial verb constructions and the grammatical expression of social relations in Japanese and White Hmong, as well as the intersections of language, society, and culture. She authored the monograph Serial Verbs in White Hmong (Brill’s Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture, 2015), offering a detailed analysis of serialization strategies in this Southeast Asian language. She co-edited The Integration of Language and Society: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Oxford University Press, Explorations in Linguistic Typology, 2021) with Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon, including her chapter 'The grammatical expression of social relations in Japanese'. Additional significant publications encompass 'Cotemporal serial verb constructions in White Hmong' (in Complex Predicates, Cambridge University Press, 2010), 'The Housewife Is Born: The Establishment of the Notion and Identity of the Shufu in Modern Japan' (Japanese Studies, 2002), contributions on complement clause types and bridging constructions in White Hmong, and co-authorship of the Thai Hill Tribes Phrasebook (Lonely Planet, 1991). Jarkey has led projects on language proficiency testing validation and secured Australian Research Council Discovery Project funding for cross-linguistic research on language and society. She has also served as Head of the School of Languages and Cultures. Her contributions have impacted linguistic typology, Japanese sociolinguistics, Hmong studies, and pedagogical advancements in language education.