Sven Osterkamp

Professor of Japanese Language and Literature, Ruhr University Bochum

Short Bioraphy

Sven Osterkamp is Professor of Japanese Language and Literature at Ruhr University Bochum. His research interests include the history of the Japanese language(s) and writing systems from their earliest verifiable form to the present, with language contacts both within East Asia and between East Asia and the West, and their textual witnesses. Further research interests include early knowledge of Japanese and other East Asian languages and writing systems in the West, the history of East Asian collections, as well as the typology and history of writing systems and the interrelation of language and writing.

Selected Publications

  • Osterkamp, Sven and Christoph Anderl. „Northwestern Medieval Chinese“. In: The Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Vol. 3: Men–Ser. Ed. by Rint Sybesma. Leiden: Brill, 2017, 218–229.
  • Osterkamp, Sven. “A mokkan Perspective on Some Issues in Historical Phonology”. In: Studies in Japanese and Korean Historical and Theoretical Linguistics and Beyond: Festschrift Presented to John B. Whitman. Ed. by William McClure and Alexander Vovin. Leiden: Brill, 2017, 45–55.
  • Osterkamp, Sven. “A Sketch History of Pre-Chamberlainian Western Studies of Ryukyuan”. In: Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages: History, Structure, and Use. (Handbooks of Japanese Language and Linguistics). Ed. by Patrick Heinrich, Miyara Shinsho and Shimoji Michinori. Berlin, Boston: Mouton de Gruyter, 2015, 61–80.
  • Osterkamp, Sven. “Lorenzo Hervás (1735–1809) and the Account of the Japanese and Korean Scripts in His Paleografía Universal.” Scripta 7 (2015): 1–57.
  • Osterkamp, Sven. Nicht-monosyllabische Phonogramme im Altjapanischen. Kritische Bestandsaufnahme, Auswertung und Systematisierung der Fälle vom Typ oñgana. (Veröffentlichungen des Ostasien-Instituts der Ruhr-Universität Bochum; 60). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011.