Junko Itō

Who is Junko Itō?

Junko Itō is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the daughter of mathematician Kiyoshi Itō.

Itō focuses on phonology and morphology. She is primarily known for her research into 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 received her Ph.D in Linguistics in 1986 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst while studying with Alan Prince.