South Korean professor Sohn Jae-hyun has been chosen as the recipient of this year's award in memory of the late renowned Japanese linguist Kyosuke Kindaichi, the memorial society of the linguist said Sunday.

The Tokyo-based memorial society has decided to present Sohn, a Japanese language professor at Seoul's Duksung Women's University, with the Kyosuke Kindaichi Memorial Award, one of the highest honors in Japan's linguistic circle, in recognition of her book, "The System and Distribution of Korean Dialects' Accents."

It will mark the first time a South Korean has received the award. Sohn is scheduled to receive it in Tokyo on Dec. 17.

Sohn, who is now a visiting professor at the Linguistics Dept. of the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a e-mail interview with Yonhap News Agency, "I am pleased to receive the prestigious award."

"Compared to the Japanese language, studies on the accents of the Korean language have yet to be activated."

A graduate of Seoul's Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Sohn earned her master and doctoral degrees in linguistics at the University of Tokyo and served as a director of the Japanese Language Society in South Korea.

The Kyosuke Kindaichi Memorial Award was named to honor Japanese linguist Kyosuke Kindaichi (1882-1971), who is chiefly known for his studies of the language of Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan.

Since the establishment of the award in 1973, the award has been given to researchers of the Japanese language, other languages of neighboring peoples and their related culture. (Yonhap)