Do you know what “classifiers” are? In Turkish, you may use “tane” (or “adet”) to count objects (e.g., 3 tane), but in Japanese, you need to change the quantifiers, or numeral classifiers, based on what you are counting. For example, you may use “hiki” for cats (e.g., 3 hiki no neko), “nin” for people (e.g., 3 nin no hito), “dai” for tables (e.g., 2 dai no teeburu), and “hai” for water (e.g., 2 hai no mizu; for water, classifier changes depending on its containers though!). Just like that, many languages in the world have grammatical classifier systems that classify everything into different categories. Kinda like grammatical gender, but it is different because the correspondences between things and classifiers are mostly NOT arbitrary, and classifier languages often have many classifiers (not just masculine, feminine, and neuter). Some say there are like 500 classifiers in Japanese!

This new chapter by Junko Hoca and her wonderful co-authors Dr. Maki Kubota and Dr. Jiuzhou Hao reviews (1) the relationship between classifiers and conceptual representation, (2) how classifiers are acquired in first language development, and (3) how second language learners and bilinguals acquire classifiers.

Kubota, M., Kanero, J., & Hao, J. (2026). Understanding the complexities of classifier acquisition in monolinguals and bilinguals. In N. Schiller & T. Kupisch (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Classifiers. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191957215.003.0013

Helin reached out to Junko Hoca back in 2021 to seek research opportunities, which were quite limited at the time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Helin and Junko Hoca designed an online study examining the effects of accent and nationality on hiring decisions. This project was partly motivated by Junko Hoca’s frustration at seeing several of her talented English teacher friends being mistreated in local schools simply because they did not come from stereotypical English-speaking countries such as the US. 

The study was fully designed and implemented, and data were successfully collected; however, Helin and Junko Hoca were unable to finalize the manuscript. A few years later, İrem Kuyucu and Pelin Öztürk joined the project, bringing with them a strong fascination with language and a keen motivation to advance the project. As each of project members progressed through different stages of our careers, like completing master’s theses and relocating to other countries, finalizing the manuscript proved challenging. Nevertheless, we are delighted that the work has finally been completed and published! 

We would also like to thank friends of Helin and Junko Hoca who generously provided speech recordings, and Arzu Wasti Hoca for her guidance in publishing the work. 

Kuyucu, İ., Erden, H., Öztürk, T. P., & Kanero, J. (2026). To Hire or Not to Hire: The Influence of Accents on Hiring Decisions. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 34(1), e70044. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.70044

Blazhenkova, O., Kanero, J., Duman, I., & Umitli, O. (2025). Read and imagine: Visual imagery experience evoked by first vs. second language. Psychological Reports, 128(2), 1067–1100. https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941231158059 (Preprint available at https://psyarxiv.com/b32dx)

Our Master’s student Onur Can Öz, co-supervised by Mehmet Kuru Hoca and Junko Kanero Hoca, defended his Master’s thesis “Rewriting time: The influence of the Ottoman script on spatiotemporal cognition in historical and modern context”. You may not have seen Onur Can too many times in this account as his degree was Master of Art in Turkish Studies, but he has been closely working with Junko Hoca for his very ambitious idea of combining approaches in History and Psychology to create a truly interdisciplinary thesis. We thank Fatma Öncel Hoca, Tommaso Stefani Hoca, and Burcu Ünlütabak Hoca for sharing helpful and insightful comments as jury members (of three historians and two psychologists!), and everyone else who helped Onur Can along the way. And now Onur Can is off to pursue his PhD in Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona! Congratulations, Onur Can! 

Our Master’s student İrem Kuyucu, co-supervised by Çiğdem Bağcı Hoca and Junko Kanero Hoca, successfully defended her thesis “Lost in pronunciation: The influence of sociolinguistic cues on truth judgements”. The committee members were all impressed by your wonderful work! Thank you Aylin Küntay Hoca, Arzu Wasti Hoca, and Seçil Gönültaş Hoca for being there and for sharing the valuable feedback. And thank you everyone who helped İrem in her Master’s journey. Congratulations, İrem!

Our Master’s student Pelin Öztürk successfully defended her thesis “Juggling regular and irregular verbs: An evaluation of rule- and analogy-based models and the role of Executive Functions”. The committee was impressed with the great writing and presentation! Special thanks to the committee members Aslı Aktan-Erciyes Hoca and Cağla Aydın Hoca for their valuable input and to everyone else who helped her along the way. Congratulations, Pelin!