The phonology of Japanese 9780199545834

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T he Phonology of the W orld’s Languages General Editor: Jacques Durand

Published The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese Kristjdn 入mason The Phonology o f Danish Hans Basb0ll The Phonology of Dutch Geert Booij The Phonology of Standard Chinese, second edition San Duanmu The Phonology o f Polish Edmund Gussmann The Phonology o f English Michael Hammond The Phonology o f Italian Martin Kramer The Phonology o f Norwegian Gjert Kristoffersen The Phonology o f Japanese Laurence Labrune The Phonology of Portuguese Maria Helena Mateus and Ernesto d*Andrade The Phonology and Morphology of Kimatuumbi The Lexical Phonology o f Slovak Jerzy Rubach The Phonology o f Hungarian Peter Siptar and Miklos Torkenczy The Phonology o f Mongolian Jan-Olof Svantesson, Anna Tsendina, Anastasia Karlsson, and Vivan Franzen The Phonology o f Armenian Bert Vaux The Phonology and Morphology o f Arabic Janet Watson The Phonology o f Catalan Max Wheeler The Phonology o f German Richard Wiese In preparation The Phonology o f Tamil Prathima Christdas The Phonology o f Welsh S. J. Hannahs The Phonology o f Turkish Bari§ Kabak The Phonology o f Latin Giovanna Marotta The Phonology o f Spanish Iggy Roca The Phonology of Greek Anthi Revithiadou The Phonology o f Swedish Tomas Riad The Phonology o f Washo Alan C•し Yu

THE

PHONOLOGY OF

JAPANESE

Laurence Labrune

O X FO RD U N I V E R S IT Y P R E S S

OXFORD U N IV E R S IT Y PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Laurence Labrune 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King's Lynn ISBN 978-0-19-9545834 13579108642

A C K N O WL E D G E M E N T S

This work is a substantially revised and updated version of my book in French entitled La phonologie du japonais, jointly published by the Paris Linguistic Society and Peeters editions in 2006. For his constant support and enthusiasm, I would like to express my gratitude to Jacques Durand, who supervised this work from its very beginnings and later gave me the opportunity to publish it at Oxford University Press. Many thanks are also due to the following friends and colleagues for their comments and help on earlier versions in French or in English of this book or on parts of it: the late Nick Clements, Marc Plenat, Takayama Tomoaki, Catherine Gamier, Francois Dell, Tanaka Shin^chi, Irene Tamba, Elsa Gomez-Imbert, Martin Kramer and several anonymous readers. I am especially indebted to Kamiyama Takeki who read the entire final manuscript with great care, making many valuable comments and suggestions which helped me correct a number of mistakes. Particular mention must also be made of Abe Junko, Hiraide Naoya, Wakasa Anju, Furihata Atsuko, Nakamura Yayoi, Kawaguchi Yuji, and many other friends and colleagues who kindly provided information on the Japanese exam­ ples, of Joan Busquets for his help in editing the figures, and of Michel VieillardBaron for assistance with the poetic materials. I am also most grateful to all the Japanese scholars who have provided me with their teaching, advice, support, and help throughout the last twenty years or so during my research stays in Japan, in particular Komatsu Hideo, Kitahara Yasuo, Hayashi Chikafumi, Haraguchi Shosuke, Joo Hakutaro, Kondo Takako, Aoki Saburo, and I am especially grateful to Takayama Tomoaki who was always willing to share his vast knowledge of the phonology of Modem and Ancient Japanese with me. I owe a special and old debt to Akinaga Kazue thanks to whom I discovered the joy of Japanese phonology at Waseda University during the years 1987-1989. I acknowledge with gratitude several scholarships from the Japanese Ministry of Education and The Japan Foundation, which allowed me to conduct research in Japan at Waseda University and Tsukuba University on several occasions. These institutions gave me the precious opportunity to carry out most of the preliminary investigation for this work. My research has also benefited from the constant scientific and financial support of my CNRS research team in Bordeaux and in Toulouse, CLLE ERSS (UMR 5263) and the University of Bordeaux 3 which I also want to thank.

vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I also thank Teddy Auly, a cartographer at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the University of Bordeaux 3, who edited the two maps included in this book. Finally, my sincere thanks go to John Davey and his staff at Oxford University Press for their editorial support and everlasting patience. None of these persons, of course, necessarily agrees with the analyses I propose. All errors and omissions are mine.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Tables， figures, and maps Notes on transcription, abbreviations, and other matters

v xi xii

1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Theoretical background 1.2 The Japanese language 1.3 Particular status of Japanese for linguistic science 1.4 Previous Western literature on the phonology of Japanese 1.5 Overview of the writing system 1.6 The stratification of the lexicon 1.6.1 Wago 1.6.2 Kango 1.6.3 Gairaigo 1.6.4 Other types 1.6.5 The limits of stratum categorization

1 3 4 6 6 7 13 16 17 20 22 22

2 VOWELS 2.1 The vowels of standard Japanese: outline of the system and general characteristics 2.2 Old and dialectal vowel systems 2.3 Distributional characteristics of /e/ 2.4 Phonological status of /i/ and /u/ 2.5 Vowel insertions and deletions 2.6 Vowel devoicing 2.7 Vowel length 2.7.1 The case of long le/ 2.7.2 Origin and distribution of long vowels depending on the lexical strata 2.7.3 Phonological status and representation of long vowels: intrinsically long vowels vs. double vowels 2.7.4 Prosodic shortening 2.7.5 Prosodic lengthening 2.8 Sequences of two different vowels: the problem of 'diphthongs5 2.9 Relative frequency of vowels

25 25 2b 27 28 28 34 39 40 41 44 47 49 53 57

Viii

CONTENTS

3 CONSONANTS 3.1 General characteristics of the consonant system 3.2 /p/ and /b/ 3.3 /t/a n d /d / 3.4 /k/ and /g/ 3.5 /s/ and /z/ 3.6 The phonological status of hushing and affricate consonants 3.6.1 sh [¢1,y [?.], and ch [tg,] 3.6.2 ^ [ t s ] 3.7 /h/ 3.7.1 Phonological correspondence between h, b, and p 3.7.2 Diachronic development of /h/ 3.8 /m/ 3.9 /n/ 3.10 The status of the velar nasal [rj] 3.10.1 It6 and Mester’s treatment (1997) 3.10.2 Kindaichi’s treatment (1942) 3.11 /y/ (and palatalization) 3.12 /w / 3.13 M 3.14 New consonants 3.15 Relative frequency of consonants

59 59 60 62 63 64 66 66 68 69 70 75 77 78 78 81 86 88 90 92 96 99

4 THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING 4.1 General properties of Japanese voiced obstruents 4.1.1 Limited distribution, low frequency, and co-occurrence restrictions 4.1.2 Failure to undergo gemination 4.1.3 Instability and transparency 4.1.4 Historical development of voiced obstruents 4.1.5 Representation in the writing, past and present 4.1.6 The internal structure of voiced obstruents 4.2 Rendaku 4.2.1 Rendaku triggering factors 4.2.2 Rendaku blocking factors 4.2.3 Correlations between rendaku and accent 4.2.4 Some theoretical proposals concerning rendaku 4.2.5 Concluding remarks on rendaku 4.3 Post-nasal voicing 4.4 Voicing in Japanese, a supra-segmental feature?

102 102 102 104 105 107 108 111 112 115 119 124 125 128 128 130

CONTENTS

5 SPECIALSEGMENTS 5.1 /N / (the mora nasal) 5.2 /Q/ (gemination) 5.3 /R/ (vowel length) 5.4 The origin of special segments 5.5 Properties of special segments 5.6 Relative frequency of special segments

ix

132 133 135 137 137 138 141

6 PROSODIC UNITS 142 6.1 The mora 143 6.2 The syllable? 147 6.2.1 Preliminaries 147 6.2.2 Previous proposals concerning the structure of the Japanese syllable 148 6.2.3 Absence of positive evidence for a heavy/light syllabic distinction 150 6.2.4 A reexamination of the alleged evidence in favour of the syllable 154 6.3 For a strictly binary model of the basic prosodic unit in Japanese 161 6.3.1 Japanese as a syllable-less language 166 6.3.2 The Non-Accentuation of Deficient Moras Principle (N A D M )168 6.3.3 Hierarchy of Japanese prosodemes (moras) 169 6.4 The foot 170 6.5 The prosodic word and the upper levels of theprosodic hierarchy 174 6.6 Summary and concluding remarks 176 7 ACCENT 7.1 General principles of Tokyo Japanese accentuation 7.1.1 Basic mechanisms 7.1.2 Atonic words (and their difference from final accented words) 7.1.3 Frequency of the accent patterns 7.1.4 Accent shift by virtue of the NADM principle 7.1.5 An overview of two theoretical treatments of the Japanese accent 7.2 Accent of simplex words 7.2.1 Yamato nouns 7.2.2 Verbs and -i adjectives 7.2.3 Sino-Japanese lexemes corresponding to a single Chinese character 7.2.4 Western loans 7.2.5 A constraint-based account of the accentof Western loans

178 179 179 182 186 188 189 193 193 196 199 201 202

CONTENTS

X

7.2.6 Other types of simplex words 7.3 Accent of compound words 7.3.1 Compound nouns with a [modifier-head] structure containing only one accent nucleus 7.3.2 A constraint-based account of compound noun accentuation 7.3.3 Compound nouns containing two accent nuclei 7.3.4 Yamato dvandva compounds 7.3.5 Compound mimetics 7.3.6 Two-character fixed Sino-Japanese compounds 7.3.7 Compound verbs 7.3.8 Numeral compounds 7.4 The accentuation of phonological phrases 7.5 Dialectal and sociological variation in accent 7.6 Tone or accent? The Japanese word-prosodic system from the typological point of view 1.1 An overview of accent studies in Japan

214 215

References Index

267 287

216 222 235 236 237 237 240 241 248 251 258 262

T A B L E S , FI GURES , A ND MAPS

Table Table Table Table

1.1. 1.2. 3.1. 4.1.

Table 6.1. Table 7.1.

Table Table Table Table Table

7.2. 7.3. 7.4. 7.5. 7.6.

Table 7.7.

Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

Figure Figure Figure

Hiragana (basic symbols) Katakana (basic symbols) Consonantal phonemes of Japanese Summary of blocking patterns among Yamato noun-noun compounds The 103 distinctive moras of Modem Standard Japanese in phonological transcription Location of accent in nominal Yamato and Sino-Japanese words (according to Sibata, 1994), in relation to length of lexemes Accent of simplex Yamato nouns Accentual effect of particles Accent of verbs Accent of -/ adjectives Accent of compounds made up of a numeral + Sino-Japanese specifier Cross-dialectal accent correspondences for bimoraic nouns for the five Kindaichi word classes

2 . 1 . Spectrogram and oscillogram of aki kara (with devoiced /) 2.2. Spectrogram and oscillogram of aki demo (no devoicing of /) 2.3. Final vowel shortening in Western clippings 2.4. Token frequency of vowels in Archaic Japanese 2.5. Token frequency of vowels in Modem Japanese 3.1. Textual frequency (in %) of Archaic Japanese consonants 3.2. Lexical frequency (in %) of Archaic Yamato Japanese consonants for the initial of words 3.3. Lexical frequency in absolute value of consonants according to their position in bimoraic Yamato nouns in the modem language 3.4. Textual frequency of modem Japanese consonants 7.1. Accent curve (F0) of hana-ga ^ ow er5 7.2. Accent curve (F0) of hana-ga° ^ o s e 5

Map 1 . Administrative Japan Map 2. Geographical distribution of accent types

8 9 59 123 144

187 194 195 198 199 246 256 35 3b 48 57 57 99 100

100 101 182 182 xiv 252

NOTES ON T R A N S C R I P T I O N , A B B R E V I A T I O N S , AND OTHER MATTERS

The system of romanization adopted throughout the book is the Hepburn system (ヘボン式 ， / ^ except for the notation o f the bilabial fricative [中] which is written as h before m, and of vowel length. Long vowels are transcribed as ou, aa, ii, ei, or eey uu (rather than d, a, i, e, m), except in proper names, linguistic terms, and in the bibliography. This transcription, which has been calqued on the kana writing, has the advantage of allowing for a more adequate notation of accent by dissociating the two parts of a long vowel. It has one drawback, which is that it does not allow for a distinction between tou ^ ‘tower’ （ actually pronounced as [_to:]) and tow 問う ‘to ask’ （ ['tom]) which are both spelled as とう in /»>(2尽0/2(3. IPA transcription will be provided for disambiguation of ou sequences in the text when necessary. When needed, the phonological transcription (see Table 6.1, section 6.1) is used, as well as phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For instance， the word しゆうり（ 修理 in た 〇 72ゾ 7) meaning ‘repair’ will be transcribed as shuun in adapted Hepburn, /syuRri/ in phonological transcription, and ['puiiri] in IPA. In Hepburn romanizations, the accented mora appears in bold. In IPA tran­ scriptions, the sign ' is placed before the accented mora following the usual practice in the IPA: kokoro [ko'koro] 'heart5, kyouto ['kjoito] 4Kyoto5. Atonic words are followed by the symbol °: sakura0 'cherry tree\ Many Japanese words display several possible accent patterns. Generally, only the most frequent pattern is given for a word, except when accent variation may be relevant to the discussion. Accent will not be provided for ancient, dialectal, or invented forms (except when relevant for the discussion), for non-independent morphemes and in cases where the form has to be considered independently of its accentuation. In the citation of examples taken from other scholars who do not provide accent information, I have automatically added the accent patterns if necessary. The source word of Western loans is given between braces: konpyuutaa ‘computer’ {computer卜 The components in transparent compound words are separated by a hyphen: kodomo-beya Children's room, when relevant to the discussion. The following abbreviations are used:

NOTES ON TRANSCRIPTION, ABBREVIATIONS, AND OTHER MATTERS

intr. tr. |i

x iii

Tr V C Cl # *

= intransitive verb = transitive = any mora = deficient (weak) mora = regular mora = syllable = foot = vowel = consonant = initial constituent，C2 = final constituent (in compounds) = word boundary = unattested form (or， reconstructed forms in passages dealing with

jp ch rk H L AJ OJ

= = = = = = =

m M

a

historical matters) Japanese Chinese Ryfikyfian high (tone)， or heavy syllable low (tone), or light syllable Archaic Japanese Old Japanese.

In Chapter 3, which is devoted to the consonantal system, the notation of classical (linear) generative phonology is used. For instance, the formula x —^y /_ z reads as jc becomes y when occurring before z. Old Chinese reconstructions come from Todo (1996) except when otherwise specified. Japanese personal names are given in the following order: family name, personal name. They are cited under the romanized form which appears in the original publication. Authors1 names of books and papers published in Japanese have been transcribed following the Hepburn system, except for those people who have chosen some other transcription (when this other transcription is known to me). The spectrograms and the oscillograms were made using the Praat software developed by Paul Boersma and David Weenink, Amsterdam. Finally, note that contrary to a majority of recent Western works on Japanese phonology, I do not recognize the existence of the syllable in this language, although I will occasionally provide syllabic information or representations for comparative purposes when needed. The view retained in this book is that of the native Japanese tradition in phonology, which holds that only the mora is relevant.

Map 1 . Administrative Japan

INTRODUCTION

The Phonology o f Japanese offers a comprehensive overview of the phonological structure of modern Japanese from its segmental to its prosodic and accentual structure. The purpose of the book is twofold. First, it will present the actual 4state of the art* of Japanese phonology, based on a compilation of recent and older Western and Japanese materials, reflecting current debates in Japanese phonology. The aim is to provide a synthesis of two major research streams: that of Japanese traditional linguistics and philology, kokugogaku which is characterized by its data-oriented approach, a strong philological background, and careful attention to the empirical realities of the language, but which, unfortunately, seems to be largely ignored outside Japan in spite of its excellence and remarkable achievements (see the seminal works by Kindaichi Haruhiko, Hashimoto Shinkichi, Hattori Shiro, Hamada Atsusm, Kamei Takashi, and many others); that of Western scholarship, for which Japanese has often served as a test ground for newly developing theories. One should recall that many aspects of Japanese phonology have contributed to the advance of modem phonological theory in a significant manner. Without aiming at exhaustivity, let us mention the works of James McCawley in the 1960s (classical generative phonology), Haraguchi Shosuke in the 1970s (non-linear phonology), Ito Junko and Armin Mester in the 1980s and 1990s (underspecifica­ tion theory, Optimality Theory), and Kubozono Haruo in the 1990s and 2000s (Optimality Theory). In sum, the main ambition of this book is to survey the achievements by scnolars belonging to different linguistic schools and traditions, to assess them critically, and to integrate them into a uniform approach in order to make the results available to a larger scientific community. It is hard to simply grasp the quantity and quality of native research when one has no access to it, and it is even harder to evaluate it, be it in the field of phonology or of any other area of linguistics. It should also be acknowledged that some recent Western works often fail to give credit to the richness and excellence o f this tradition.1 This is

1 For instance, it is somewhat surprising that a 520-page book entitled The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, recently published by Blackwell, includes only about 10% of Japanese titles in its abundant list of references.

2

INTRODUCTION

why it has appeared essential to devote so much attention to Japanese contribu­ tions through an approach that attempts to blend and reconcile, in a unifying perspective, two ways of doing linguistics that usually ignore each other. This stand by no means precludes our casting a critical eye over one or other approach. Further, this book aims to offer new analyses and data concerning some of the central issues of Japanese phonology in a theoretically oriented approach. Issues for which new analyses are proposed in this volume are those of the mora and syllable, the notion of ‘special mora’， compound noun accentuation, default accentuation (through a case study of Western borrowings), the underlying accent of some Sino-Japanese morphemes, the status of diphthongs, the consonant /r/, and the interaction of moras and feet. The aim is thus to provide both a critical synthesis of the state of the art in Japanese phonology and to provide theoretically oriented description and ana­ lyses in its main areas. However, the purpose is not to promote a given theoretical or formal framework set in advance and to which the data of Japanese would be forcefully moulded. Rather, what I have tried to do is to provide general— albeit precise一 information on the phonological structure of the Japanese language in all its complexity and, whenever it appears relevant, to point to the analytical and theoretical extensions of the issue likely to be considered, rherefore it is why priority is always given to the presentation of the linguistic data. I have never­ theless chosen to give a tighter theoretical and formal treatment to a small number of specific issues that have appeared to deserve more thorough treatment due to their importance in the field. There are unfortunately a number of issues that I could not address as I would have liked to. Notably, there is no in-depth treatment of intonation. The morpho-phonology of verbal flexion would also probably have merited a whole chapter. However, this aspect of Japanese morpho-phonology being generally introduced in Japanese grammars and even textbooks, it is relatively easy to find good descriptions of it outside specialized phonology or morphology works. This book is intended for a general audience of students and linguists with no specialized knowledge of the Japanese language, and to non-linguist Japanolo­ gists who want to obtain up-to-date information in the field of Japanese phonology. For the needs of the latter audience, Japanese terminology has been provided both in roman transcription and in the original writing (kana or kanji), and priority has been given to first-hand sources and references in the Japanese language.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

3

1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The general framework of our reflection and analyses will be that of generative phonology in the broad sense as it has been developed from the end of the 1960s onwards, although some parts of the book also owe a great deal to structural phonology, a current that was widely followed in Japan in the 1940s, 1950s, and even later, in the works of outstanding Japanese linguists like Hattori Shiro and Kindaichi Haruhiko, whose analyses will be often referred to in the following pages. But whatever framework lies behind our discussions, a distinction is always made between an underlying form (or input) and a surface form (output). In order to account for the formal relation which exists between these two levels, we adopt a non-derivational approach which is that of Optimality Theory (see Prince and Smolensky, 1993, Kager, 1999, for introductions), in which the relationship between the input and the output is viewed as the result of the interaction of constraints rather than sequential rule application as in the tradi­ tional generative model (Chomsky and Halle, 1968). Such an approach proves to be particularly effective for the treatment of phenomena relating to prosodic morpho-phonology, and it will be used, in particular, for the formal analysis of default accentuation and compound nouns accentuation which will be offered in Chapter 7. As regards contents representations, be it the internal structure of segments in terms of distinctive features or the architecture of the prosodic components, the references are clearly those of traditional non-linear and autosegmental phonology. Optimality Theory has actually very little to say about the contents and nature of representations, and is compatible with various representational conceptions. Phonology being a relatively technical and formal discipline, it was not possible within the limits of this work to provide dennitions and explanations of all the concepts used here. It is assumed that the basic notions of articulatory phonetics and of phonological analysis are known. Readers who want to acquaint themselves with the discipline are invited to consult for example the reference works of Kenstowicz (1994a), Goldsmith (1990, 1995), and Hayes (2009), which provide good introductions to various aspects of phonological theory. In the pages devoted to the presentation of segmental phonology (Chapters 2, 3, and 4), the theoretical background of the description and analyses will be cast in a classical (and rather neutral) framework in terms of features and statements. A broadly generativist phonological framework will be adopted, such as the one introduced in Kenstowicz (1994a). For the mora and syllable analysis (Chapter 6), the autosegmental, non-linear framework will be used. I will refer especially to the conceptions developed by Larry Hyman (2003 [1985]) regarding

4

INTRODUCTION

the status of the TBU (tone-bearing units), i.e. the moras, for the analysis, but other standard models will also be reviewed for the sake of comparison. The accentual analyses of compound nouns and of Western borrowings in Chapter 7 (sections 7.2.5 and 7.3.2) are cast within the framework of Optimality Theory. Some other current phonological frameworks will occasionally be referred to when necessary, for instance when previous scholarship and analyses concerning some of the problems of Japanese phonology provide alternative and arguably more insightful views of the phenomena under consideration.

1 .2 T H E J A P A N E S E L A N G U A G E Japanese is spoken by about 130 million speakers, nearly all living in the Japanese archipelago. Its genetic affiliation is dubious. It has often been classified as a Ural-Altaic language, but the reality of its origins is more complex. Prehis­ toric Japanese is probably the result of hybridization between an Austronesian and an Altaic language, with some possible other continental influences. The language closest to Japanese is Ryukyuan, spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, southwest of Kyushu. Together, they form the Japonic family. The language closest to Japanese outside Ryukyuan is Korean. There exist strong typological resemblances between the two languages, which suggest a genetic relationship, although well-established regular phonetic correspondences are hard to establish (see Martin, 1966 for an attempt). Two main Japanese dialect groups are recognized: Eastern dialects (Tokyo type) and Western dialects (Kyoto-Osaka type), and Japan is still a country with great dialectal diversity. This book is primarily concerned with Modem and Contemporary Standard Japanese. Japanese linguists generally refer to that variety as hydjungo ( ^ ^ 1 5 ) ‘standard language’ ，办 伽％ o ( 共通語 ） ‘common language’， or T欲}^ か （ 東京 f 〇) 4the Tokyo dialect\ It corresponds roughly to the language spoken in the districts of the area known as Yamanote in Tokyo and in the national media, in particular the NHK (Japanese Broadcasting Corporation). We will also refer to dialectal varieties o f the language and to historical developments when necessary for an understanding of the synchronic facts. For the periodization of Japanese, the following labels are adopted. These divisions also correspond to standard major political divisions in Japanese politi­ cal history:

一 Archaic Japanese (7況以が上代語)： before 794 (until the end of the Nara period) - Old Japanese (c/z/iた が中 古語 ) ：794—1350 (Heian and Kamakura)

T H E JA PA NESE LANGUAGE

5

- Middle Japanese (c/^ がか？ 中世語 )： 1350-1603 (Muromachi，AzuchiMomoyama) - Pre-modem Japanese (た zww/go 近世語 ) ：1603-1868 (Edo) - Modem Japanese (ん /rtぬな6>近代語 ) ：1868-1945 (from Meiji to World War II) Archaic Japanese was the period when Chinese characters were first massively imported into Japan. The materials of those times are written exclusively using Chinese characters, read in a Chinese or a Japanese manner (Man yogana, 力葉仮名 ‘Chinese characters used only for their phonetic value’， see below). Old Japanese saw the development of the kana syllabaries, and the flourishing of a national literature written exclusively in kana with very few words of Chinese origin. The language reflected in the materials is primarily that of the Kyoto aristocracy and has served as the basis for the prestige written language for centuries. The middle of the fourteenth century can be seen as the major turning point between Ancient and Modem Japanese, to the extent that it is sometimes sufncient to oppose Old Japanese (the language before the fifteenth century) to Modem Japanese (the language after the fifteenth century). Middle Japanese underwent significant changes due to the spread of the Sino-Japanese vocabulary and the generalized use of the kanji to write it. The so-called kanji-kana majiri わ ( 漢字仮名混じり文 4た and km ? mix style’)， based on a mixture of k/zy/ and kana as in Modern Japanese (see section 1.5) became the most common style of writing. Middle Japanese is also a period of major modification in the verbal and adjectival flexional system as well as in the phonological system with the establishment of the special segments (see Chapter 5), as a result of the sound changes known as onoin e 1® , whose first occurrences can be traced back to Old Japanese. Pre-modem Japanese, in the Edo perioa, is known to us through a huge number of different types of materials reflecting the colloquial and dialectal diversity of the time, including a number of foreign descriptions of the Japanese language, principally European ones, with the publication of dictionaries and grammar books, but also accounts made by Chinese and Korean scholars (such foreign descriptions of Japanese actually started in the fifteenth century). Modem Japa­ nese, starting with the Meiji Restauration in 1868, has been influenced by Western languages. It also corresponds to the spread of Tokyo Japanese as the standard language, and the development of a new form of written language closer to the spoken one. ‘Contemporary Japanese’ （ がm/aなo 現代語） can be used more specifically to refer to the variety of language which developed after World War II.

6

INTRODUCTION

1.3 PARTICULAR STATUS OF JAPANESE FOR LINGUISTIC SCIENCE A word should be said here about the status of Japanese in the field of linguistics. Japanese is no doubt one of the best-documented non-Indo-European languages in the world, if not the best-documented. In addition, it has a rare characteristic: most specialists of Japanese linguistics are native speakers of the language, who, moreover, have been working within their own rich linguistic tradition in a cumulative manner, without ignoring the achievements of general linguistics outside their country. This tradition, it should be emphasized, did not develop in an intellectual environment completely sealed off from the rest of the world. It has been nourished by Chinese, Indian, European, and American contributions throughout its long history. Descriptive and cumulative work has thus been conducted in an optimal manner, although one might have the feeling that, in very recent years, even the major works by outstanding scholars such as Arisaka Hideyo, Hashimoto Shinkichi, Kindaichi Haruhiko, and Hattori Shiro, for exam­ ple, are no longer part of the compulsory reading of younger Japanese linguists trained in the West. Last but not least, Japanese linguistic research has enjoyed quite a favourable economic environment. For decades, the various academic institutions of the country such as research centres and universities have devoted an impressive number of material means to research on the national language and its dialects, with the result that one can benefit, in the case of Japanese, from an exceptional quantity of quality data and documentation (even more, it seems, than for English or French, which have also been extensively studied). The accumulation of descriptive and analytical materials is completely bewildering, and contemporary phonology would be much worse off if it did not take account of the contributions of the Japanese academic tradition.

1.4 PREVIOUS WESTERN LITERATURE ON THE PHONOLOGY OF JAPANESE There exist few general references in European languages relating to the phonol­ ogy of Japanese, in comparison to the huge number of studies carried out in Japan. I will only mention here studies of a general and broad character, but naturally there are a fair number of articles and some monographs relating to specific aspects of the phonology of Japanese (mainly in English). The excellent book by Timothy J. Vance, An Introduction to Japanese Phonology, published in 1987, constitutes the best descriptive reference of the

OVERVIEW OF THE WRITING SYSTEM

7

discipline in the English language. Unfortunately, it has been out of print for a number of years, and therefore hard to get. Timothy Vance is also the author of The Sounds o f Japanese, published in 2008, which is a handbook designed for English-speaking students. It is of course impossible not to mention James McCawley's thesis, The Phonological Component o f a Grammar o f Japanese, published in 1968， which was one of the first studies seeking to apply to a language other than English the generativist framework of the Sound Pattern of English (Chomsky and Halle, 1968). This reference remains invaluable, and much of the data and analyses of McCawley have not lost their interest, but a lot of water has gone under the bridge of phonological theory since 1968, so the framework is a bit outdated. One should also mention the monograph by Samuel E. Martin, Morphophonemics o f Standard Colloquial Japanese, published in 1952, that of Gunther Wenck, The Phonemics o f Japanese— Questions and Attempts (1966) as well as Japanese Phonetics (1997) and Japanese Phonology (2000) by Akamatsu Tsutomu. Wenck is also the author of a monumental Japanische Phonetik in four volumes, written in German (1954-1959). In French, one should mention Haruhiko Kinda-ichi (= Kindaichi) and Hubert Maes^, Phonologie du japonais standard, published in 1978, which consists in fact of a translation and adaptation by the second author of an original Japanese text by the first author (Kindaichi), one of the most eminent Japanese phonologists. In addition to the fact that it is out o f print, this work, which is rather short (59 pages), is theoretically outdated. I am the author of La phonologie du japonais, published in 2006 by the Societe de Linguistique de Paris (Peeters, Leuven). The present book is a substantially updated and modified version of this 2006 French edition. All these books, except for Labrune (2006) and Vance (2008), have sadly been out of print for a number of years.

1.5 OVERVIEW OF THE WRITING SYSTEM Throughout this book, we will occasionally refer to the orthographical status which some of the phonological units of the language have received in the native writing system of Japanese. This is because the written dimension provides an interesting background to the phonological reality of these units. The graphemic system often reflects the phonemic one, and, vice versa, since phonology in turn can be influenced by the writing system, or, to put it in Suzuki?s words (Suzuki, 1977), writing can become a formative agent of the language. This is especially true for Japanese. Kess and Miyamoto (1999:32) observe that the nature of the multi-faceted Japanese orthography must be viewed as a formative agent that exerts some influence, if not power, over the spoken language itself. However, it goes without saying that the orthographical criteria should not be held up as definite proof of the phonological status of a given element.

8

INTRODUCTION

This being said, a general presentation of the writing system of Japanese will be given in the following pages, but readers with no specific interest in the issue may skip this section and proceed directly to the following one. The Japanese writing system is composed of four different scripts. First, it has two original ‘syllabaries’2 of 48 signs each (of which 46 only are presently in common use), the hiragana and the katakana , which are referred to under the generic term of kana . Katakana and hiragana were created by the Japanese. They both took as their basis Chinese characters used only for their phonetic value (the man'ydgana 万葉仮名 ； see Seeley, 1991 for a general presentation of the history and development of the Japanese writing system in English). Hiragana and katakana are based on the mora3 and take as their basis the same units, so that a given mora of Japanese can be denoted by the corresponding letter of either set. The elaboration of these two sets of kana symbols was more or less achieved around the tenth century. In addition, several thousands or ideographic characters originally borrowed from Chinese, the た g a k u s e i0 学 生 4student’， referred to above, is frequently realized with an elision of/u/, i.e. [gakse:] rather than [gakrnse:]. The vowel deletion in ga— e /0 [gakse:] is— quite rightly— regarded as the result of vowel devoicing, whereas that of g a k k a i0 (g a k u + k a i) 'congress* is not. Admittedly, the fall of /u/ seems more systematic in g a k k a i0 than it is in g a k u s e i0— even if that remains to be demonstrated in spontaneous speech for a dialect like Tokyo Japanese in which vowel devoicing is particularly frequent. The point is, however, how g a k s e i0 should be analysed with respect to g a k k a i 。• Are we dealing, in both cases, with the same

VOWEL INSERTIONS AND DELETIONS

33

phenomenon, the only difference being that the vocalic deletion in g a k k a i0 is lexicalized, recognized by dictionaries, and reflected in the k a n a spelling ， whereas that of g a k s e i0 is not? Or does one have to consider that two distinct processes are operating? The answer to this question is likely to have important consequences for the conception and definition of the basic rhythmic unit of Japanese. Indeed, a form such as g a k s e i0 contains a phonetically closed syllable, g a k , with a coda which is NOT the first part of a geminate, a structure that would be quite novel in Japanese. Moreover, note that in g a k s e i0, the deletion of the vowel cannot be transcribed in Japanese writing. Indeed, in their actual state, the k a n a offer no possibility of writing a consonant that is not followed by a vowel, with the exception of the mora nasal and the first part of a geminate. According to M. Beckman (1996)， the deletion o f /i/ in • た 書記官 'secretary5 (/syoki/ + /kan/) does not yield a homophone for sh o k k a n 0 'tactile organ, (/syoku/ + /kan/), because the first /k/ of sh o k ik a n is still released. However, it remains to be proved that such a difference exists, and that, if it does, it is indeed percepnDle at the auditory level. But in any case, these two words being accentually different, they could not be completely homophonous. The problem is particularly acute because the deletion of a high vowel is not so systematic and the factors which condition it are not completely identified. Doublets like te k ik a k u 0 / te k k a k u 0 4exact*, k a k u k a i0 / k a k k a i0 ‘the sumo world ’ ，s a n k a k u k e i / sa n k a k k e i ニ 角 形 ‘triangle ’ ，sa k k y o k u k a 0 / 作 曲 家 ‘music composer’， or がせた /«。 / がたん/«。奨 学 金 'scholarship, grant5, seem to be quite frequent. Moreover, intra and inter-speaker variation is extremely widespread. The degree of lexicalization of the compound and its morphological cohesion are also certainly among the determining factors, but they are probably not the only ones. In many respects, this phenomenon is reminiscent of mute e (schwa) in French phonology. Particularly interesting also is the fact that, as noted by many scholars, morphological structure is relevant to account for the surface form when the Sino-Japanese compound contains more than two characters (or stems). As Ito and Mester (1996), building on Vance (1987), McCawley (1968), Martin (1952), and Kubozono (1993b) put it, contraction (i.e. CV reduction to /Q/) seems to occur at the end of a stem, provided that it is not the end of a word, or, as Vance (1987:161) states, the Q-final allomorph does not appear before the major constituent break in Sino-Japanese words of three or more morphemes. For instance, the character わ以sm0 另U ‘special’， undergoes gemination in わ以此たz.〇另ll 席 ‘assigned seat’ （ 心 別 + 狀た/ 席 ） but not i n めた“/ ^ 似 -此た/ / 如た《知び w-化た/ 特 別 席 （ 如た《わ你 m。特 別 ‘ special’ + sW 席 ）because the structure of the latter is (XX)(X). One can further observe that the form * 的たw心 た /特 別 席 ，if it was to

34

VOWELS

be created, could be interpreted as 4a specially assigned seat', with a (X)(XX) structure. Another point to be taken into consideration is the fact that the vowel deletions which generate geminations also occur in the Yamato stratum when the speech rate is fast, and that they also concern vowels other than /u/ and /i/. For example k a k i-k o m u 4to swallow one^ meaF, or d o k o k a 4somewhere5 are frequently realized k a k k o m u and d o k k a . In fact, vowels which occur between two /k/ seem more particularly concerned by such 4wild? deletions, whereas those located in a /tVC/ environment undergo deletion only in highly lexicalized Sino-Japanese morphemes like /iti/ + /kai/ > /iQkai/ ik k a i 一 0 4once, or /iti/ + /sai/ > /iQsai/ is s a i 一 歳 4one year old’. Actually， some of these cases can also be accounted for by vowel devoicing, a phenomenon which will be presented in the following section. A general study of Japanese gemination based on oral, spontaneous, and authentic data, wmch would also take into consideration the problem of vowel devoicing, remains to be carried out.

2.6 VOWEL DEVOICING Vowel devoicing, unvoicing, or devocalization (わ〇//2 no 此 /んa 母 音 の 無 / 匕） more particularly characterizes the dialects of Kanto and Kyushu. The IPA diacritic which transcribes devoicing is for example [i], [iu]. Devoicing is not a recent phenomenon in Japanese. Collado (1632) already remarKs that certain Japanese /i/ and /u/ are sometimes inaudible. Devoicing affects mainly the high vowels /i/ and /u/ in the two following contexts: - when the vowel (be it accented or not) is placed between two voiceless consonants (tnis also includes before the first part of a geminate) (4a); — when the vowel is unaccented and placed after a voiceless consonant and before a pause (4b). Devoicing is almost compulsory in Tokyo Japanese, except when several devoiceable vowels occur in consecutive moras (see below). /a/ and /〇/ also undergo devoicing but in a more occasional manner, and under more restrictive conditions. They must, in theory, be unaccented, occur between two voiceless consonants, and, in addition, the same vowel must occur again in the following mora (4c). The vowel /e/ seems to be the least affected by devoicing (Maekawa, 1993; NHK, 1985; Akamatsu, 1997). However, Amanuma et a l . (1989) mention the existence of realizations containing a devoiced /e/ (4d).

VOWEL DEVOICING

(4)

a. g a k u sh a 。 ts u k i p ik k o r o 。

b. k a r a s u aki kechi

c. k o k o r o h o k o ri haka

d. se k k a k u 0 k e sh o u

[hikui], [91km] [gakuipa] [tsui'ki] [pikkoro]

‘to puli’ ‘scholar’ 4moon 9 ‘piccolo’

[karasui] ['aki] ['ketgi]

‘crow, raven’ ‘autumn’ ‘stinginess’

[ko'koro] [hoko'ri] [ha!ka]

‘heart， ‘pride， ‘tomb ，

[sekkakui]

'on purpose * 4make up ，

[kf’po:]

35

Figures 2.1 andl 2.2 present the oscillograms and spectrograms for the word a k i 'autumn*, first in a devoicing context (a k i k a r a 'since the autumn5, Figure 2.1) with a devoiced /i/, then in a non-devoicing context (a k i d e m o 'even

Figure 2.1. Spectrogram and oscillogram of aki kara (with devoiced /) (0.430s)

VOWELS

36

a

k

i d

e

m o

Figure 2.2. Spectrogram and oscillogram of aki dem o (no devoicing of /) (0.410s)

in autumn’， Figure 2.2). The instrumental analysis shows that the devoiced vowel is characterized by the absence of the first formant and of the so-called 'voice bar5 that corresponds to the vocal folds vibration in aki kara, contrary to

aki demo. Devoicing can lead to total disappearance (deletion) of the vocalic element on the surface (Vance, 1987). This is particularly obvious when the high vowels /i/ and /u/ occur after a fricative, especially in word-final position. For instance shita° /sita/ [pta] 'under\ desu [des] C opula5, -masu [mas] (Politeness Auxil­ iary). However, even in such drastic examples, the mora containing the orphan consonant preserves its prosodic weight and still counts as one rhythmic unit. This is one of the reasons why the vowel cannot be considered to be deleted at the phonological level. Another reason is that the quality of the reduced vowel can be recovered from the articulation of the consonant which precedes it (see below). As Faber and Vance (2000) observe, Japanese voiceless vowels maintain this supralaryngeal integrity regardless of their surface duration, both in influencing the articulatory and acoustic characteristics of adjacent phonological units and in mediating longer-distance effects of one segment on another.

VOWEL DEVOICING

37

When an accented vowel is devoiced, the accent frequently shifts to an adjacent mora, especially in the conservative Tokyo speech. However, the factors determining the choice of the new accent location_ when a possibility of choice exists— remain unclear. Note that such accent shifts are becoming less frequent because it is now common to maintain an accent on a devoiced vowel. This new trend seems to go back to the second half of the twentieth century, since it is already reported by Akinaga (1967). (5)

Accent shift due > m u sh ik e n > sa n k a k u k e i > k ite

to devoicing k ite m u sh ik e n sa n k a k u k e i

4to come and texam-free, ‘triangle’

Tanaka (2001) assumes that, in cases where several adjacent vowels are likely to receive the accent after it has been displaced, the principle is that the high pitch remains within the same foot, as the following examples illustrate (brackets indicate feet boundaries). (6) (bi)(jutsu)(kan)

> (bi)(jutsu)(kan) / *(bi)(jutsu)(kan)

‘museum，

(shita)(kuchi)(biru) > (shita)(kuchi)(biru) /*(shita)(kuchi)(biru) ‘lower lip’ This is an interesting assumption, and it would be desirable to gather additional data in order to confirm its validity, since counterexamples, in which the accent moves outside the foot, or does not move at all, are rather easy to find. For instance, Yokotani (1997) takes up the following examples: (te i)(k u u )-(h i)(k o u ) ("/:/バ 氐 空 飛 行 機 ‘low-altitude plane’ in which the accent may move to the right た た ん 0 (the foot parsing is mine)， and ‘a hat rack’ in which the accent cannot move. It should be remembered that feet organization is not always evident. It is the case of the m u s h ik e n (or m u sh ik e n with devoicing or i) example, quoted above, where one hesitates between a structure (m u sh i)(k e n ), which builds a foot every two moras, whatever the morphological structure of the word, and a structure (m u )(s h i)(k e n ), which respects the morpho-lexical structure of the word made up of three Chinese characters，無 試 験 ， and where the unit corresponding to a character corresponds to one foot, whatever its length in moras. In the first case (m u sh i)(k e n ) the word appears as an exception, since the accent moves to another foot. In the second case (m u )(s h i)(k e n ), sh i is a monomoraic foot so there is no other mora available within the same foot, but the choice of the right mora in preference to the left one for accent shift remains unexplained. Although the phonetic aspects of Japanese vowel devoicing have been exten­ sively studied, the factors which condition it remain difficult to capture. This phenomenon also has important consequences for phonology and morphol­ ogy. It causes, among others, the creation of heavy consonant clusters at the

38

VOWELS

surface level, as well as accent displacements. This is what makes the analysis of vowel devoicing particularly complex and delicate. Moreover, it is worth noting that, as far as the basic description of the facts is concerned, few works agree. Many scholars point out that devoicing cannot occur simultaneously in two adjacent moras, but exceptions exist. For instance bakuchiku0 4firecracker \ can yield [bakuitqkui] or [bakiutqkiu] but never *[bakuitpikui] (Akamatsu, 1997, the transcription is mine). One can also mention the extreme example tsukutsuku-boushi [tsuikuitsuikui'bo:pi] ‘（ a variety of) cicada’， which may contain a succession of four devoiced vowels. One also frequently reads in the literature that devoicing cannot affect the initial vowel of a word when there is no consonant (i.e. a vowel in the #_ position), but here also exceptions can be found, for example ikiru [i'kiru] 'to live' (Imada, 1981:82). In addition to those already mentioned, factors likely to favour vowel devoi­ cing, and which might be relevant in cases where several consecutive devoiceable vowels occur, are: speech tempo; absence of accent on the devoiceable vowel; position in the word (vowels occurring in the initial mora seem more easily devoiced, except when they are onsetless); presence of /s/ before the vowel; presence of [k] especially, but also of [t], [s], and [g], after the vowel; presence of [a] in the following mora (Yoshida N., 2002). Interestingly, these factors do not necessarily cumulate. A vowel placed after [s] easily gets devoiced, just as a vowel placed before [s] does， but a vowel placed between two [s]’s remains generally voiced, even though its loss would create a succession of two s's similar to a geminate at the surface lev el,a sequence which is acceptable in Japanese. On the other hand, all things being equal, accented vowels occurring in a wordinternal mora, those preceding a morphemic boundary (Kondo, 1997; Vance, 1992, quoted by Tsuchida, 2001), those followed by /h/ (under its allophonic forms [q], [(()], or [h]), are more resistant to devoicing. Lastly, as mentioned just above, devoicing of vowels surrounded by two /s/Js is rare (Yoshida N., 2002). The interaction of these various parameters is particularly delicate to model. Tsuchida (2001) presents an attempt to analyse vowel devoicing within the framework of Optimality Theory, but she only takes into account a small number of the factors just mentioned. High vowel devoicing is a rather common phenomenon across languages (see for example the case of Canadian French). It is basically due to the fact that /i/ and /u/ are less sonorous and generally shorter than the other vowels, and also, as Kamiyama Takeki (p.c.) points out, to aerodynamic and articulatory factors (narrower constriction causing a higher intra-oral pressure, thus a lower transglottal pressure, a lower trans-glottal airflow resulting in vocal fold vibration harder to realize). Moreover, the devoicing of /i/ and /u/ is no doubt favoured in Japanese by the fact that a number of consonants possess specific allophones before high vowels. These allophones are maintained even when the vowel is

VOWEL LENGTH

39

totally deleted, so that it is generally possible to recover the quality of the vowel on the basis of the consonantal allophone which precedes it even if the vowel is deleted (for a study of how allophones are processed and recognized, see Ogasawara and Warner, 2009). Thus in the reduced form [ts'ki] tsuki 'moon5, the presence of the affricate allophone [ts] of the /t/ consonant is revealing of the underlying presence of /u/, the only vowel which triggers the affricate realization of the phoneme /t/. The study by Beckman and Shoji (1984) shows that the deleted vowels /i/ and /u/ can colour the spectrum of the fricative [p] in the moras shi /si/ and shu /syu/, thus allowing the vowels to be recovered. The same effect probably occurs after other consonants, and especially after the affricate ch [tp]. Because of this, it seems reasonable to assume that the vowel is not phonologically deleted. Finally, recall that vowel devoicing, because it may involve complete disap­ pearance of the vocalic segment at the surface level, entertains close and complex relations with the phenomenon of consonant gemination, as seen in section 2.5. More generally, in colloquial Japanese, devoicing also creates phonotactic se­ quences that are deemed to be illicit because they contain a sequence of two consonants C1C2 (where C l is neither nasal nor homorganic with C2), including word-initially. Let us mention again examples such as desu [des] CVC and shita [pta] CCV. Kondo (2000) rightly observes that, because of the generalization of vowel devoicing, Japanese syllable structure may have become more flexible and is now in the process of changing. Kondo (2003) also argues that consecutive devoicing is prevented because it would create sequences of more than two consonants, which would upset speech rhythm. The status and phonological representation of devoiced vowels will be ad­ dressed again in Chapter 6 which deals with prosodic constituents. It will be argued that prosodic units which comprise a devoiced vowel can be regarded as structurally defective.

2.7 VOWEL LENGTH Vowel length is distinctive in Japanese. Compare: ku 4district5 obasarf 4aunt, / obaasan 'grandmother5, hiru 4leech' / hiiru 4heer, tokai° 4city' / toukai0 ‘destruction’，た叹 抓0 ‘dubious’ / レ /客^ zo4 (realized as [keigeN]) ‘reduction’.

4 Recall that vowel length is transcribed by doubling the vowel in the cases of a, /, and u (aa, uu), and by use of the letter u in the case of o (ou), and by / in the case of e (ei), except in some special cases like tooru 4to go through\ oneesan *older sister', etc. where the transcription remains raithful to the km z spelling ( とおるa n d おねえさん).

4〇

VOWELS

A lone vowel is supposed to last twice as long as a short vowel. However, instrumental analyses show that tne ratio between a long and a short vowel is closer to 1:2.5 or even 1:3 (Shimizu Han 1962: 65). As Akamatsu (1997) observes, the point is that native speakers intend (or are convinced) to pronounce a succession of two isochronous identical vowels when they articulate a long vowel, and that native listeners perceive them as such. On the phonological le v e l,a long vowel equals two rhythmic units, i.e. two moras, whereas a short vowel is worth only one. The prosodic weight of the sequence kou [ko:] is thus phonemically equivalent to that of the sequences kon or koto, that is, twice that of ko. Except for the particular case of the long /e/ in some or its possible dialectal realizations (as [ei]), there does not exist any significant quality difference between a short and a long vowel. Unlike other languages where length is correlated with quality differences, only duration is distinctive in Japanese. 2.7.7 The case of long e The case of long e calls for some observations. The long e whicn is heard in SinoJapanese words like sensei [sen'se:] tprofessor, or reigi [rei'gi] 4courtesy' goes back to a sequence e + /' realized as [e:] in normal speech. In a more formal, conservative register, for example in the speech of certain actors or singers, the pronunciation [ei] is frequent. It is also usual in certain dialects, in particular in the Kyushu area. One should note that long e is written as ei in hiragana (^lV This is probably why, under the hyper-corrective influence of the wnting, the pronunciation of long e as [ei] is now spreading among some speakers of the standard language. It seems reasonable to consider the phonetic realization [e:] as the output of an intrinsically long vowel (see section 2.7.3, for the precise definition of what is an intrinsically long vowel), and [ei] as a sequence of two distinct vowels, /ei/ (see section 2.8 below). In some words of the native Yamato lexicon, for example o n e e sa r i 'older sister’， as well as in recent loans like m 伙 た ‘maker’ {maker}， long ど always remains [e:]. In such words, the vowel is a true long vowel (intrinsic long vowel) in the sense defined below. The same applies in principle to long e's occurring in Yamato words, which result historically from the loss of an intervocalic consonant, even though such long ど s are transcribed as 以 m た(3A2の for example の X_V ヽ from e/n’ ‘ray (fish)’，たara • か れ い （鲽 ） from た ‘plaice’，me/• め い （ 姪) from me hi 4niece \ However, one will also frequently encounter the pronuncia­ tions ['ei], ['karei], and [*mei]. Orthoepic recommendations concerning this type of words are vague and even sometimes contradictory.

VOWEL LENGTH

41

In cases where there exists a morphological boundary between e and /, the sequence is pronounced as [ei] in theory, not [e:]. M e i r o ['meiro] iabyrinth, is segmentally distinct from m e iro ° [m eiro](服 +/厂〇) 目 色 4eye colour5. However, Amanuma et a l . (1989) mention a number of exceptions, like たの7¢?。 ‘wool thread’ （ たe + t o ) 毛 糸 ， realized as [keito] or [keito ],たの ‘hair colour’ ， 毛 色 realized as [ke:f 〇] or [keiro]. I have also heard [uikei'rerui] 4to admit, for u k e -ire ru (u ke-\-ireru ). Lastly, note that a long e, realized as [e:] (or [c:]) can appear in colloquial male language in place of y o u , initiated at the stage of Old Japanese, extended over several centuries, and at least until 1500, when the first Westerners from Portugal— who introduced the word ‘Europa’一 reached Japan. The modem writing in h ir a g a n a has maintained some of these old diphthongs (in particular o u and e i) in the current k a n a script, while the others have vanished without leaving any orthographic trace in the contemporary language. Moreover, as already mentioned, the evolution e i > e e , the most recent one, is not yet realized by all speakers and not reflected in the writing. 2 .7 .3

P h o n o lo g ic a l s ta tu s a n d r e p r e s e n ta tio n o f lo n g v o w e ls : in tr in s ic a lly lo n g v o w e ls v s. d o u b le v o w e ls

For the linguist Kindaichi Haruhiko, as for a majority of Japanese phonologists, the second part of a long vowel in words such as im o u to 'younger sister5 or k u u kou ° ‘airport’ is identified as a ‘special segment’ denoted as / - / or /R/ (sometimes also /H/) in phonemic transcription, and as [:] in phonetic transcrip­ tions (see section 5.3), rather than as a succession of two identical short vowels. I m o u to 4younger sister? will thus be transcribed phonemically /imoRto/ and phonetically [imor'to], k u u k o u 0 'airport5 /kuRkoR/ and [kuizko:]. Within the auto-segmental framework, an intrinsically long vowel of this sort is conceived as one single segmental unit associated with two prosodic positions. As we shall see in Chapter 6 , where a detailed presentation of the prosodic components of Japanese and arguments for the structural organization of the mora will be provided, the basic Japanese rhythmic unit is conceived in this book as a maximally binary structure corresponding to a mora. So a word such as kou ° [ko:] ‘this manner’ corresponds to two rhythmic units (two moras)， as shown in ( 10).

VOWEL LENGTH

(10)

45

Intrinsically long v o w e l: こ う た [ko:] moras positions segmental level

However, some of the phonetically long vowels of Japanese must be analysed phonemically as a succession of two distinct segments with identical phonetic quality (double vowels) rather than as a single vocalic segment associated with two prosodic positions. The relevant representation appears in (1 1 ) .Such vowels do not structurally differ from the sequences of two different vowels presented further in section 2.8. Simply, the two vowels in question are of identical quality. (11)

Succession of two identical vowels (double vowels) : こ お k o o /k o o / realized as [ko:] or [koo] moras positions segmental level

Such representations allow us to better capture the phonological difference existing between pairs such as the following which are familiar textbook examples: (12)

a• 砂 糖 屋 似 ^ ? ツ“ 。（ 似吻； め 里 親 似 如 -のぬ。 b . 数 理 smm/*/ 酢冗り

[satoija] *[sato?oja] [satoija] or [sato?oja]

l^suiiri] Y su^uiri] l^sunri] or [lsuiI>uinJ

‘sugar shop’ ‘foster parent’

'mathematical theory* ‘vinegar seller’

The difference between the two items of a pair constitutes an issue much debated in the domain of Japanese phonology (Kindaichi 1950; Hattori, 1955, 1961; Hamada, 1951, etc.). In (12a), the first word comprises something which can be analysed as an intrinsically long vowel, the second one a succession of two identical vowels. Although such sequences are generally realized in an identical way in normal speech, a phonetic difference between the two members of each pair may appear in slow or formal speech, that is, it is possible to have a hiatus, materialized in the form of a pause or a light glottal stop [?], between the first and the second element of a double vowel, but not between the two parts of an

46

VOWELS

intrinsically long vowel .6 The representations in (10) and (11) account for this difference in a natural manner: in ( 11) , there are two distinct segments, but only one in ( 10). The sequence uu in suuri Vinegar seller5, whose phonetically long vowel results from the succession of two short u's, separated by a morphological boundary (su 4vinegar? + uri° Salesman*), belongs to the second type as illu­ strated in ( 11), that of two-vowel sequences, whereas suuri 'mathematical prin­ ciple? (suu 'mathematics5 + ri *principle,), which has only one (phonetically and phonemically) long vowel, pertains to the type represented in (10). The phono­ logical representations of these two words will thus be as follows: (13)

suuri /suRri/ 'mathematical principle?(a) vs. suuri /suuri/ 4vinegar seller5(b) b. /suuri/

a. /suRri/ ^

M

A

1

A \

s

^

A

1 1

/ u

八

A r

i

i

i

s

A i

u

u

I I

r

i

The following pairs are also to be structurally distinguished:

koou° [koo:] or [ko?o:] owo [1 〇:〇] or [■koi1。 ]

(14)

好 悪 た

‘acting in concert’ ‘likes and dislikes’

They correspond to the representations in (15): (15)

koou° /kooR/ Acting in[ concert5 vs. kouo /koRo/ 'likes and a. koou° IkooR/

b. kouo /koRo/

^ 1^ M 八 八 八

八 八

1 1

1

\

/

\

丨

A /

1

6 In contrast with Kindaichi, Hattori (1955, 1960, 1961) assumes the presence of a zero consonant / ’/ to distinguish long vowels resulting from the succession of two vowels separated by a morphological boundary (in our terminology, double vowels) from those which constitute intrinsically long vowels. According to him, the latter represents a succession of two vowels with no consonant inbetween. Hattori adopts the notation IW'WI for the former, and f W / for the latter, for example /suuri/ ‘mathematical theory’ and/su’uri/ ‘vinegar seller’. The zero consonant of Hattori can be reinterpreted as an empty onset.

VOW EL LENGTH

47

The vowels o u and uu of Sino-Japanese words seen above in (7), the majority of the vowels in ( 8a) which result from vowel coalescence (sometimes caused by the loss of an intervocalic consonant) with subsequent compensatory lengthening and in some cases modification of the vocalic quality, as well as the vowels which result from prosodic lengthening ( 8c), are to be analysed as intrinsically long vowels, except in cases where the vowel plays a flexional role as the final i in y a s a s h ii0 ('gentle5), the final u in su u ° (*to smoke5), and the second i in k iite ° (4to hear and . . . ’， cited in 8a). On the other hand, the vowels shown in ( 8b) correspond to double vowels, i.e. to a sequence of two identical vowel nuclei, in which a hiatus is possible. When a long vowel results from the loss of a consonant surrounded by two identical vocalic segments, like k o h o ri > k o o ri° 4ice 5or o h o k i > o o k i cbig?, things are more ambiguous, as the k a n a spelling reflects. In such words, long o is written as o o and not o u to 0 . The problem is comparable to that of the long e written as e i, already discussed. It would be rash to assume that all speakers of Japanese have exactly the same phonological representations for the long vowels which occur in these types of words. It is probable that for certain speakers, the [〇:] of k o o r i° from k o h o r i (a Yamato lexeme) and that of k o u r i ‘axiom’ （ a Sino-Japanese lexeme) have the same phonological representation today, with an intrinsically long vowel, while they have a different representation for other speakers, k o o r i° having a double vowel under the influence of the spelling. It is necessary to keep in mind that in non-Westem words, all the intrinsically long vowels of the modem language derive from double vowels (following the evolutionary pattern VCV > VV > V: as in a h u g i > a u g i > o u g i ^an5, or VC > VV > V: in certain Sino-Japanese words, for instance to n g > to u 東 ‘East’） ， except for the case of prosodic lengthenings. The natural fate of a double vowel is thus to turn into an intrinsically long vowel, and the moment of this transformation naturally varies according to words or individual speakers. The distinction between an intrinsically long vowel and a double vowel is further justified by the fact that the latter has a property of which the former is deprived: m double vowels, the second element can carry an accent, for example, m izu u m i ia k e 5, to o k e r e b a 4ir it is far\ o o i ^many*, whereas intrinsically long vowels can only bear an accent on the first part of the vowel. 2 .7 .4

P r o s o d ic s h o r te n in g

A long vowel is frequently reduced to a simple vowel, as in the following examples: koukou0 > kouko° 'Japanese pickles5, hontou0 > honto° ^rue5, konpyuutaa > konpyuuta ‘computer’ {computer}，akanbou。 > akanbo。‘baby ’， daijoubu > daijobu 4all right\ sensei > sense 'teacher, master\ According to Sukegawa et a l . (1999), about one third of all long vowels undergo this type of

48

VOWELS

reduction in spontaneous speech. The phenomenon, known as ‘prosodic shortening’， occurs primarily in Western loans， and to a lesser extent in SinoJapanese words. It is especially common in a non-formal register, and concerns mainly medial or final vowels in moras which follow another long vowel or a mora nasal as in k o u k o ° 'salted white radish* or h o n to ° 'true5, respectively derived from k o u k o u 0 and h o n to u 0 (KKK, 2004). This is the reason why, accord­ ing to Takeuchi (1999:46), words such as ry o k o u 0 1voyage\ or b u r e z a a 'jacket5, do not undergo prosodic shortening, whereas h o n to u 0 > h o n to ° 'true, or k on p y u u ta a > k o n p y u u ta {computer} are among the words most frequently short­ ened. The study by Sukegawa et a l.(1999) also establishes that vowel shortening is rare in word-initial position, including words which can be regarded as monosyllabic， for example /wow (所 ‘already’. Vowel quality also plays a role with regard to prosodic shortening, but its relevance can mainly be observed in Western loans, since this is the only stratum which allows all five long vowels of the Japanese system to occur freely and frequently in any word position. In Western abbreviations, final prosodic shortening more frequently targets the [—high] final vowels /a/, /e/, and / 〇/ than the [+high] vowels /i/ and /u/， as shown by Figure 2.3 (Labrune，2007). In 80% of the cases at hand (20 words out of 25), final length tends to be maintained after /i/ and /u/ word-finally, whereas it is deleted in more than 60% of the cases after /e/, / 〇/, and /a/ (58 words out of 88). For instance, kan n in g u p e e p a a {cunning paper} 'cheat sheet' becomes k a n -p e / k a n -p e ° , with final shortening, rather than ^ k a n -p e e , while b a ta a p iin a ts u {butter peanuts} is clipped as b a ta - p ii° , rather than ^ b a ta -p i.

28

□ No prosodic shortening ■

Prosodic shortening

Figure 2.3. Final vowel shortening in Western clippings

VOWEL LENGTH

2 .7 .5

49

P r o s o d ic le n g th e n in g

A number of micro-paradigms of the Yamato stratum have long vowels which do not result from the historical evolutions of the type VCV > VV and/or VV > V: as described above. Such long vowels are prosodically derived from a short vowel by secondary lengthening. The paradigms in question generally have emotional, impressionistic, or emphatic connotations. They can be divided in three subtypes. The first type includes family terms based on vocatives, hypocoristics, baby talk, and manner deictics (for instance o k a a s a n y u u -c h a n 'little Y uko\ kou ‘this manner’ )；the second type contains interjections and mimetic adverbs or interrogatives (z u u tto Continuously5, n a a n i VhEt5); the third group consists of bases which are all one-mora long, and generally belong to nominal or numerical series (n ii 'two*, k a a Tuesday*). They are described below in detail for the sake of completeness, but the reader who is not a specialist in Japanese can skip this section and come back to it at a later stage. Type 1 A. Kinship terms vocatives: k a a -s a n kou°. This form kou° would then have been reinterpreted as derived from ko, the 1st degree deictic morpheme which one finds in kore° 'this5, koko° 'here5. Later, under the pressure of analogy, the forms sou°, aa°, and d o u ,s would have developed, by means of prosodic lengthening out of the bases so, a, do. Note that the bases ko, so-, a-, and do- are all monomoraic, a characteristic which no doubt also played a role in the development of the lengthened series, since, as we will see below, one type of prosodic lengthening precisely affects monomoraic morphemes.

7 Japanese baby words are characterized by the following prosodic patterns, all with initial accent on the first mora of the stem: MmM (HL in syllabic terms), for instance onbu 'piggyback', nenne 'sleep5, an'yo lw alk\ MmMm (HH in syllabic terms), as in oppai ^breast', haihai 'crawl', ponpon 'belly'. Finally, a few forms are made by reduplication of a monomoraic stem and o-prefixation, for instance o-tete 'hand', o-meme 4eye*. 8 According to Yanagida (1 9 9 1 ),aa° is first attested in texts of the end of the Edo period (nineteenth century), after た ow0 and 奶“。 ， while the first attestation of is older, dating back to 1527.

VOW EL LENGTH

51

The four series of forms which have just been described do not concern isolated, single lexemes but rather paradigms whose paradigmatic coherence is precisely marked by the presence of a long vowel derived from a short one. We are thus dealing with a rather systematic usage of vocalic lengthening, which may be analysed as an instance of template morphology. Type 2 The second type pertains to expressive and emphatic lengthening occurring in interjections and mimetics, and in a number of interrogative words. The corresponding forms with short vowels almost always exist. We thus find: A. Interjections: for example ow/ [’oii] ‘hey!’，

如。‘w ell’，

wee ‘listen!’.

B. Onomatopoeia and ideophones: zaazaa 'water pouring heavily*, gee° (expression of dislike), huutto0 (puffing sound or action). C. Adverbs and interrogatives with emphatic connotation: zuutto0 Continuously5, youku 'often, w ell5, naani 'what?5. The long vowels wmch are phonetically realized in these types of words are only seldom denoted in the conventional orthography. Type 3 Lastly, there exists a type of prosodic lengthening of one-mora-long bases, most of which pertain to enumerative series or lists: days of the week, Sino-Japanese or Yamato numbers, animals of the Chinese zodiac, as well as reduplicate verbal radicals. It is to be noted that all these forms are accented on the initial mora. A. Days of the week: the expression for Tuesday and Saturday% a compound made of the first two monomoraic morphemes of ka-youbi T uesday? and doyoubi4Saturday5is realized kaa dou (or kaa-dou°). Only 4Tuesday? and 'Saturday5 are concerned with prosodic lengthening, since they are the only weekday bases which are monomoraic. B. Sino-Japanese numbers in enumeration: Sino-Japanese numbers present the following forms when they are recited (underlined forms mark secondary lengthenings): ichi l2 \ san° 43 \ shu 44 \ gou 45 \ roku 46 \ shichi 47 \ hachi 48 \ kyuu yu:f eu > yo:, au > 0:, ou > 0: (see section 2.7.2), except at morpheme boundary. We thus find ka-u° 'to buy*, omo-u 4to think5, and so on. On the other hand, the \ a sequences never existed in Yamato or Sino-Japanese monomorphemes， except for a few cases of prosodic lengthening. It is interesting to note, following Takayama T. (2003), that even in Western loanwords or at morpheme boundary, where Ya is likely to occur, a transition glide is frequently inserted: thus shiai° [^ijai] 'match*, takuan [ta'kuiwaN] halted radish*, itaria0 [itariJa] 'Italy*. This suggests that Wa sequences (ia, ea, oa, ua as well as aa) are problematic (on aa / a: see also section 2.7.2). Sequences of three or four vowels, or even more, are easy to find: for example in the place name fl/o/ 丰目生，the adjective び6>/ ‘blue’， the noun ‘houses’. We could thus build a sentence made up uniquely of vowels such as aioi e aa iuu aoi mo 0 (相 生 へ あ あ い う 青 い 魚 を 追 う ） 4to follow such a blue fish towards Aioi，. The term diphthong {mjuboin 一 M 母 音 or ノ《わo/ai重 母 音 ） is frequently used in the phonetic descriptions of Japanese. However, the definition of what the various scholars mean by ‘diphthong’ is not always precise. Amanuma et al. (1989:93-98) operates a distinction between renboin JiS® b1 'vowels in succes­ sion? and juboin f i S p1 4diphthong*, and considers that certain V + / sequences can be qualified as diphthongs yjuboiri) in the traditional sense of the word. However, the evidence for such a distinction seems rather morphological in nature since V/ is regarded as a 4diphthong * when there is no morphological boundary between V and /, as in the word kai 4sheir. Kawakami (1977) considers

11 The situation was very different in Nara Japanese, since the rhythmic units (syllables or moras) were all of the form V or CV. Onsetless vowels were not allowed except morpheme-mitially.

54

VOWELS

the sequences ai, ui, oi, ae, ao, and oe as diphthongs (nijuboin) while specifying that one cannot always speak of a true diphthong when a clear morphemic boundary separates the two vowels. According to Saito (1997:85), the sequences ai, ui, ae, au easily turn into the 4diphthongs? ai, ul, ac., an except when they are separated by a semantic boundary (haisha, ha+isha° dentist5), and except in bimoraic Yamato words: oi° 'nephew*, e i 4ray (fish),>ou° 'to follow'. However, in an experiment I undertook in 2001 with the help of Joo Hakutaro, the forms 歯 医 者 （ /za-h/zfl) ‘dentist， and /ifl/i/w 敗 者 ‘loser’ appeared to have the same phonetic realization, although a morpho-semantic boundary between a and i exists in the first word but not in the latter. The question of whether the existence of a morpheme boundary between the two vowels of a sequence is relevant is also evoked by Hashimoto M .(1977:27). According to him, the pairs kai ^ 4a meeting? (one morpheme) and kai R az. ‘lower rank’ （two morphemes たa + /)， or tS ‘regret’ （one morpheme) and 句 意 ‘meaning of a phrase’ （two morphemes /:w+z) are perceived as different in certain dialects. However, this does not prove that there is a truly phonetic or even phonological difference between them. It is quite possible that speakers' percep­ tions are heavily influenced by writing or morphological structure. Moreover, accent might also be involved, since there exist dialects which can operate an accentual distinction between CV/ pairs, for instance between the pairs kai *sheir and kai 'a paddle5(Izu dialect, Uwano, 2003). More experimental studies are thus necessary in order to clarify this point. It is nonetheless a major issue because it is closely related to the problem of the interaction between mora and syllable in Japanese. Indeed, if there were any evidence that two phonetically and phonemically different sorts of Vi V 2 sequences exist in Standard Japanese (for example a difference between kai ^ and kai T f e , as already mentioned), one could then argue that the first type is monosyllabic while the secona is dissyllabic. This would imply that both the mora and the syllable are distinct and relevant units in Japanese, an assumption which is challenged in this book, as we shall see in Chapter 6 . I consider that it is mistaken to regard V iV 2 sequences as diphthongs since I know of no phonetic or phonological evidence which would prove that they are. They are simply a succession of two distinct vocalic nuclei, each with its own prosodic weight representing one mora. A number of arguments can be brought forward in order to justify this analysis. First, the quality of the vowels involved in such sequences is not notably different from what it is when they are realized in isolation. There is no significant gradual change of the quality of the first vowel towards the second one, no crescendo nor decrescendo between Vi and V 2, contrary to what generally occurs with diphthongs in other languages. Second, in slow or careful speech, a pause— sometimes even a glottal stop— is frequently inserted between the two vowels, something which would be impossible in the

SEQUENCES OF TWO DIFFERENT VOWELS: THE PROBLEM OF ‘DIPHTHONGS， 55

case of true diphthongs like those of English or Chinese, for example. The group [ai] in the English word sky cannot be articulated in two syllables, i.e. ska.i, whereas the Japanese words ‘above’，a/, ‘love’， ‘fish’ respectively [ui.e ]， ['a.i], and [ui.o] are normally uttered in two beats. Moreover, in such groups, the second vowel can carry an accent, for example kai-nushi 4owner (of a pet)*, even though it is true that a tendency to de-accent vowels which are not preceded by an onset consonant can be observed, 12 as the possible realization of kai-nushi as kai-nushi attests. Lastly, in Japanese, no sequence of two vowels results from the diphthongization of a monophthong. There is no example of an evolution V(:) > V\W 2 like the ones so frequently encountered in Romance or Germanic phonol­ ogy, for instance Latin bene [beine] > French bien [bje]; old English nama [naeima] > modem English name [nejm]), and so forth. It is clear that the recognition of true diphthongs in Japanese is determined by one’s conception and definition of the prosodic units of the language. If one assumes a priori that syllables exist in Japanese and that syllabic weight distinctions are relevant, one is rather easily (too easily?) led to talk about ‘diphthongs’， even though there does not exist any real evidence for their existence. But the assumption that diphthongs are distinct phonological entities should in turn imply a re-examination of all the vocalic Japanese sequences because these are not limited to V/ sequences, the elements most frequently regarded as 4diphthongs, : one finds for example ae in hae° 'fly5, oe in koe V oice5, au in mausu '(computer) mouse', ao in kao° *face\ It thus becomes necessary to inquire whether these vowel sequences belong to the same prosodic unit (to the same ‘syllable’， if one believes in the existence of the syllable in Japanese) or not. However, very few authors are cautious enough to consider such cases and to set forth a thorough analysis of them within the syllabic framework. I am not aware of any strong internal or external evidence for operating a structural distinction between ‘ash’ and ど ‘fly’， or between kai *shell * and kao° 4face*. Curiously enough, there actually exists in Japanese one case for which the label 4diphthong9 could be correctly used. I have in mind the sequences transcribed as ya, yut yo (with short or long vowels) occurring after a consonant in words like /z;yaA：M百 ‘hundred’， /70 ん洲。旅 行 4trip' or ニ ュ ー ス {news 1 ‘information’， known as ッ如《 ( 掏]音 ） in the traditional terminology. However， these elements are generally not categorized as ‘diphthongs’ by Japanese

12 However, note that this type of deaccentuation concerns first and foremost the high vowels /i/ and /u/, and that it also appears under certain conditions when these vowels are preceded by a consonant (Tanaka, 1998).

VOWELS

scholars, even by phoneticians, whereas ai, ui, oi etc. generally are. Yet, ya, yu, yo present all the properties of phonetic diphthongs as generally defined: the palatal semi-consonant which occurs in first position can colour the quality of the following vowel (for example /u/ frequently becomes [ui]); the C^V groups count as only one mora, not two; diaeresis is impossible; finally, strict phonotactic rules exist, which limit the possibilities of combinations between y and the following vowel. Only ya, yu, and yo are possible. The yi group is unattested, and ye is rare (see section 3.11). From the point of view of their phonetic realization, these yat yu, and yo groups could thus belong to the category of diphthongs in the classical sense of the word. Yet, as we shall see in 3 .1 1 ,there is benefit in treating them as palatalizations of the preceding consonant at the phonological level. The difference simply consists in considering that the segment y is associated with the consonant (onset), not with the vowel (nucleus). The adequate phonological representation of such Japanese entities thus corresponds to a palatalized consonant as represented in (16), rather than to a rising diphthong as in (17). (16)

(17)

Palatalized consonant (does exist in Japanese)

I\

I

k y

a

Rising diphthong (does not exist in Japanese)

l

/l

k

y a

In conclusion, there is no real need to talk about phonological diphthongs in Japanese. In Chapter 6 , a theory of the Japanese prosodic unit (the mora) will be further developed, which considers that there exist only two structural positions in a rhythmic unit: an onset (C) and a nucleus (V). Only the C position can be the locus of palatalization. It results from this configuration that, in a phonetic sequence VV, each of the two vowels must be regarded as pertaining to two different rhythmic units.

RELATIVE FREQUENCY OF VOWELS

57

2.9 RELATIVE FREQUENCY OF VOWELS The vowels of Japanese do not all have the same frequency in the language. It is thus interesting to examine some quantitative information relative to this ques­ tion. I shall first present some statistical data for the archaic language, then some for the modem language. Both concern token frequency. For Archaic Yamato Japanese (Nara), which possessed eight vowels, the data are provided in Figure 2.4 (based on Ono, 1980). It can be seen that /a/ exhibits the highest frequency before /i/, /u/, / 〇/, and / 〇/. The vowel /e/ has a relatively low

28.9%

Figure 2.4. Token frequency of vowels in Archaic Japanese (based on the data by Ono, 1980)

24.65%

25.63%

Figure 2.5. Token frequency o f vowels in Modem Japanese (based on Campbell, 1999)

58

VOWELS

frequency, while /e/ and A/ are extremely rare. By adding the values of each member of the pairs which have merged after the archaic period, we get the following classification: /a/ is still at the top, but / 〇/ now comes second, before /i/

and /u/: a > o (6 + o) > i (1 + i) > u > e (e + e). As for modem Japanese, the data provided in Figure 2.5 are adapted from Campbell (1999). In contrast with Archaic Japanese, / 〇/ ranks first, almost equally with /a/, before /i/ then /u/; as in the archaic language, /e/ is still the least frequent of all.

3

CONSONANTS 3.1 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CONSONANT SYSTEM Two major features characterize the consonant system of modem Japanese. First, the number and phonotactic possibilities of the consonants differ considerably according to the lexical strata. Second, many of the consonants display a high number of allophones. While none of these characteristics is, by itself, specific to Japanese, it seems that in this language, the extent of the phenomenon is without common measure with what one currently observes in most other languages. Under these conditions, it is somewhat difficult to present a synoptic table of the system of the Japanese consonants. In Table 3.1 that I propose here, brackets indicate consonants whose phonemic status is debatable, while braces mark consonants which occur only in the most recent Western loans. The two moraic contoids /N / (the mora nasal) and /Q/ (the first part of an obstruent geminate), which are generally referred to as ‘special phonemes’ or ‘special segments’ in the Japanese tradition, may be added to this list as two additional consonant phonemes. Since their phonology is particular because of their moraic status, they will be dealt with in detail in Chapter 5. Consonant allophony occurs mainly before the high vowels /i/ and /u/. It involves particularly the consonants /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, and /h/. This propensity to allophony is also characteristic of the special moraic segments /N / and /Q/, and, to a lesser extent, of /r/ and /k/. Such allophonies are the source of a number of neutralization processes and also the origin of several phonemic splits, as we will Table 3.1. Consonantal phonemes of Japanese

Plosives Fricatives

Labials

Alveolars

pb

td

i 中 pi

sz

(P，冬）

|t s |

(t$)

m

n

Affricates Nasals Glides Liquid

Palatals

Glottal

kg

y [j] r

Velars

h (〇) w

6〇

CONSONANTS

see in the next pages. The possibility for such rather important variations in the articulatory realizations of the Japanese consonants is probably due to the relatively modest size of the inventory. Assimilations of a consonant to the following vowel, that is, if one thinks in terms of prosodic constituents, assimilations of an onset to the nucleus (for example the fact that /t/ undergoes affrication before /u/: [tsui]), is a manifestation of the very tight link which stands between a consonant and the following vowel in Japanese. One can subscribe entirely to the formulation by Daniels (1958:58, quoted by Coleman, 1998:268), according to whom Japanese 'consonants are said to be “prefixed” to vowels rather than to ‘precede’ them because. . . in Japanese it is necessary to put the speech organs into the position of the vo w el. . . before producing the consonant’. This type of co-articulation is of course attested in all languages, but it would seem that Japanese is rather extreme in this respect. In the following pages, we will successively review all the consonants of Japanese, in the following order: plosives (pf b, t, d, k, g), mcatives and affricates (s, z, p, rp, ts, h), nasals (m, n, rj), glides (y, w), the liquid (r), and finally consonants which have recently been introduced into the language due to the influence of loanwords.

3.2 / p / A N D / b / The bilabial plosives /p/ and /b/ are realized as [p] and [b]. The voiced plosive /b/ calls for no special comment, except for those which apply more globally to voiced obstruents, to which Chapter 4 is devoted. Let us merely observe that in Modem Japanese, /b/ functions morphophonologically as the voiced counterpart of /h/, for example under the application of rendaku (see section 4.2). H thus becomes b, as in yama + hato > yama-bato° 'wild pigeon\ The voiceless bilabial plosive /p/, on the other hand, is remarkable in a number of respects. It is currently the least frequent of all Japanese consonants (see the data in section 3.15). It also displays a limited distribution in words of the Yamato and Sino-Japanese strata. In non-mimetic and non-expressive Yamato words, /p/ generally occurs only as an alternant of /h/ or /b/, and almost solely under the geminate form [pp]. Singleton p is found only after the mora nasal /N / in a limited number of examples. The geminate pp occurs almost exclusively at morphemic boundaries in Yamato lexemes: mapputatsu (ma- + hutatsu)4(to separate) in two parts', hipparu (hiki° + haru°) 4to draw5, kodomoppoi (kodomo0 + -poi) Child­ ish*, hitorippochi (hitori + -bochi/pochi) 'all alone\ hoppe (probably *ho, ^heek 5 + expressive suffix -pe) 4ch eek \ tanpopo 'dandelion* (the etymology of

/ p / AND / b /

61

this word is dubious, perhaps from tanpo 'swell, bundle *+ -po, a suffix of obscure value). Thus /p/ never appears at the beginning of independent words. It is necessary to consider separately the case of mimetics and of familiar expressive words, including words of Chinese origin which are no longer perceived as such, where /p/ can appear word-initially. For example puka-puka / puka-puka 'floating5, ponpon 'belly (child language)5, pochi (a common dog ndimt), pakuru 'to peterf 4head, or sappari (describes a straightforward personality) (Hamano, 1998:195ff.). In Sino-Japanese words, /p/ exists only as an alternant of /h/ after /Q/ and /N/, as in the already mentioned examples (see also section 3.7): 出発 (shutsu + hatsu) 'departure5, or kenpou 4constitution * (ken + hou). However, /h/ does not automatically turn into /p/ when the compound contains more than two morphemes, in other words, when it consists of more than four moras (McCawley, 1968; Kubozono, 2005; Ito and Mester, 1996). We shall revert to this issue in section 3.7. Furthermore, the contrast between p and pp is never relevant in Yamato, SinoJapanese, and mimetic words, since it is impossible to find minimal pairs based on the [pp] / [p] opposition. In Western loans, on the other hand, no distributional constraint bears on /p/. It appears freely in the initial or medial positions as a singleton, or as a geminate word medially, for instance in poteto {potato}, kyapashitii {capacity}, hippii {hippie}. In English loans, geminate /p/ is generally the reflex of a double p in the orthography, as in hippie. It is interesting to note that in the first loans from European languages, p was systematically adapted as a geminate inside words: for example kappa0, from the Portuguese {capa} ( [ S ] )

/# ,N _ i,y

65

/ s / AND / z /

The opposition between /d/ and /z/ is neutralized nowadays before u and i, as well as before y in Standard Japanese in the Yamato and Sino-Japanese strata, although there exist four different kana symbols to write /du/, /zu/, /di/, and /zi/. This is the vestige of an opposition which used to be relevant between the four moras [dui], [zui], [di], and [?,i]. This neutralization is known as yotsugana no 紅 ^ ぬ （四 つ 仮 名 の 混 同 ，lit. ‘four た merging，） in Japanese linguistics. (5)

Tour kana m ergingneutralization of /d/ and /z/ before /i/ and /u/ in the standard language

kana

Kunrei / (Hepburn) romanization

Phonetic realization

Phonological transcription

づ

du / (zu)

[zui] or [dzui]

/zu/

ず

zu / (zu)

ぢ

d il(ji)

[^i] or [dii]

/zi/

じ

zi 1 (ji)

The four kana merging seems to have developed around the sixteenth century, the moment when it begins to be reflected in the writing. It is nowadays more or less advanced depending on the dialects. The standard dialect, in which there is commonly confusion between /du/ and /zu/ on the one hand, and /di/ and /zi/ on the other hand, is called a 'Vwo-kana dialect*. Several dialects of Kyushu and Shikoku (prefectures of Kagoshima, Miyazaki, and Kochi) maintain a four-way distinction between /du/, /zu/, /di/, and /zi/ (realized as [dzui], [zui], [d^i], and [?,i]), while other dialects, such as the famous zuzu-ben of Northern Honshu, confuse /du/, /zu/, /di/, and /zi/ under one single realization, either [ndzi] or [ndzti] (with central vowels, and pre-nasalization of the voiced obstruents). In these areas, the neutralization also affects the corresponding voiceless consonants, namely /su/ and /si/ realized as [si] or [s«], while /tu/ and /ti/ are realized as [tsi] or [ts«]. In a number of very recent loans, a realization as [dui] distinct from that of [zui] is appearing, as illustrated in the already cited example duu itto yuaserufu [duiiittojuia'seruK^ui] {do it yourself). On the other hand, it is important to note that *[si] and *[zi] are not found in any of the strata, not even in very recent loans where [si] or [zi] of the source language are adapted under the written forms ス イ or ズ ィ . The oral realizations of these sequences are by no means faithful to the writing， since ス イ is

66

CONSONANTS

pronounced as [pi] or [?i] and ズ ィ as [るi] or [dるi]. It would be interesting to determine the exact reasons explaining why certain impossible combinations in the language at a certain time of its history come to be easily accepted, like [dui], whereas others, like [si], resist faithful adaptation. Ot course, the [p] or [g] realization of /s/ before /i/ can be seen as an instance of regressive palatal assimilation, but some Japanese scholars, for instance Hamada (1964) estimate that this could well be the vestige of the earlier phonetic value of /s/, which might have been realized as a hushing fricative before all vowels and not only before /i/. There is no doubt that /s/ was hushed before /i/ and /e/ until the seventeenth century, as reflected in the Jesuits’ romanization of jcc for せ （ as in Portuguese) for instance in 4reproach? romanized as xeme {seme in Modem Japanese). Hoffmann mentions that is pronounced as se, she, or even tse in his 1868 grammar. The [^e] realization can still be heard in a number of dialects, and even marginally in the affected pronunciation of certain Tokyo words such as in ['mi^ete] instead of ['misete] *show m e? (seductive, or baby-talk register). Opinions of Japanese philologists as to what /s/ might have sounded like even earlier diverge. Mabuchi (1959) proposes that /s/ might have been [J], Kamei (1970) and Arisaka (1936, 1955) opt for [ts], and Kobayashi (1981) for [t J]. As a voiced obstruent, /z/ displays all the properties specific to this type of Japanese consonant, to which I will revert in Chapter 4. However, note that contrary to /d/, /b/, and /g/, it is not at all certain that /z/ was prenasalized at an older stage of the language.

3.6 THE PHONOLOGICAL STATUS OF HUSHING AND AFFRICATE CONSONANTS 3.6.1 sh [¢1， 7 [?»], and ch [tp] Although s h j , and ch are sometimes transcribed by means of the IPA symbols [J], [3 ]， and [tj ]， the closest IPA transcription of these sounds is [p]，[る]， and [tp] (〇r [?]»[j]» and [tg] before i and j), since they are actually alveolo-palatals or predorso-palatals. Note in addition that they are articulated with no marked lip­ rounding, and a flattened tongue blade. We have already seen that before / and y ，[p] and [る] were allophones o f/s/ and /z/, and [tp], an allophone of/t/. The sounds [p], [?,], and [t^] are frequent, particularly in Sino-Japanese words and in recent loans, before all five vowels, as the following examples illustrate.

J

HUSHING AND AFFRICATE CONSONANTS

kisha shuuri bisho-bisho

(6 )

[ki'^a] ['^uiiri] ['bipobipo]

train’ repair’ wet’

ju u joudan

[^ari] ['?,ui:], ['d^ui:] [^oi'daN], [d^oi'daN]

‘gravel’ ‘ten ， ‘joke’

• ocha。 konchuu。 chotto

[otpa] [kontpun] [' tpotto]

tea’ insect， a little’

：jari°

设

67

At first glance, it looks as if these consonants constitute true phonemes of their own, which could stand in opposition with /s/, /z/, and /t/. However, following the Japanese linguistic tradition, it is preferable to consider that they correspond phonologically to simple consonants followed by the palatal element y: sh [p ]= /sy /,7 [?>] = /zy/ or /dy/, ch [tp] = /ty/. This is actually the analysis suggested by the Japanese writing system, which uses the たana し Cs/h) ，じ （/[•) or ち （c/z/)，ぢ (/•z.)， each followed by や ;ya，ゆ ； yw， or よ ;yo in reduced size in order to transcribe these units (see section 1.5). Note in passing that the official romanization system (Kunrei, fjll^p S i), which transcribes si, ziyti, di, sya, zya, tya, dya, etc. and not shi, ji, chifji, sha,ja, chafja, as in the Hepburn system, has been directly inspired by the spirit of the Japanese kana. It is also much closer to the postulated phonologi­ cal representation. One of the arguments in favour of this analysis comes from the observation that in Yamato and Sino-Japanese, the sequences *she */sye/,2**je */zye/ and *che */tye/ do not exist. This must be considered in relation to the fact that no palatalized consonant can occur before the vowel e. The comoinations ^kye, *gye, *nye, ^hye, ^mye, *rye, etc. are unattested, just as ^ye is also, except in some recent loans. If one supposes the independent existence of the consonants sh /p/,7 /?,/, and c h /t^ l, the absence of the combinations she I^Q/Je /?»e/, and che /t^e/ in a large part of the lexicon receives no explanation. But if one supposes that sh e je , and che represent palatalizations of /s/, /z/, and /t/ before e, these gaps are simply the consequence of the fact that palatalization is impossible before the vowel e, whatever the nature of the preceding segment (on ye, see also section 3.11). Besides, even in Western loans in which sh eje, or che would be expected, they are sometimes realized as se, ze, or chie: for instance shepaado > sepaado 'sheepdog 5 {shepherd}, jeneraru > zeneraru {general}, cheen > chien {chain).

2 A few sporadic occurrences of the she /sye/ combination are encountered in Yamato words, but they are all free variants of se, for instance misete / mishete 'show me!?. This alternation must probably be interpreted as dialectal, or as an example of affective palatalization, see also p. 66.

CONSONANTS

68

In addition, it is necessary to observe that [p] and [?,] are also very rare in Yamato words before a, u, and o. Before a, there also exists an occasional free alternation between [s] and [p], or [z] and [?,] in the Yamato and Sino-Japanese strata. For example， / s/ia たe ‘salmon’， ‘cactus’，zg/イ0 / jari° 'graver, can be analysed as cases of alternation between a vowel preceded by a simple consonant (CV) and a vowel preceded by a palatalized consonant (CッV )* 一 According to this analysis, the consonants 1գ/, /?./, and / 1^/ (alias /J/, 1^1 and / t f / in certain transcriptions) can be removed from the phonemic inventory.

3.6.2 ts [ts] The question of the affricate consonant [ts] must be set in different terms from that of /p/, /?,/, and /t^/. At first glance, this consonant is also a conditioned allophone of /t/ before u. However, a few occurrences of [ts] before vowels other than /u/ can be found. Although almost all these cases occur in recently borrowed loans like “ 以 ‘tsetse fly’，む {Zeus} ， 的 ra {Zarathustra}， it is necessary to mention the existence of certain Yamato forms with [ts] such as otottsan [o'tottsaN], a variant of otousan 4dad\ It is because of this type of example that /ts / (sometimes noted as /c/) is included as a phoneme in the consonant charts proposed by linguists such as Hattori Shiro or Kindaichi Haruhiko, who nevertheless do not regard 1գ/, /?,/, and / tp/ (sh,j, and ch) as phonemic. Moreover, ts [ts] and its corresponding palatalized version ch [t^] stand in a curious relationship with /s/. These two sounds frequently work like a strength­ ened version of /s/ after gemination,"i.e. when preceded by /Q/ (see section 5.2), particularly in emotional or expressive forms, or in baby talk (Hamada 19!)4:74):

otou-san chusai de+shin massugu shoushuu

> > > > >

otottsan chicchai decchiri, decchiri。 mattsugu shocchuu

‘dad’ ‘small’ *chubby buttocks’ ‘straight， *often5

Let us also mention the forms -chan, -chama, which are expressive and babytalk-like alternants of -san, -sama (personal suffix, 4Mr, Miss, Mrs5).

3 This should be considered in parallel with the behaviour of the other Japanese fricative /h/, after /Q/. /h/ automatically becomes /p/ in cases of gemination in Yamato and Sino-Japanese words. Voiceless fricatives thus seem to resist gemination, and they tend to be transformed into occlusives when preceded by the gemination segment /Q/. One can thus posit a correspondence /Qs/ = [tssj ~ /Qh/ = [pp]， which would be attributed to a fortition process. Note also that even in Western loanwords, /h/ and /s/ undergo gemination (as [hh] and [ss]) less often than the other consonants (Kawagoe and Arai, 2002).

69

/h/ 3 .7 /h /

The fricative /h/ has the following realizations: [h] before a, e, and 0, [9] or [p] before / and y for many speakers (especially in Tokyo speech), and [({)] before u: ( 8)

Realizations of /h/ [h] /h/

く

/ — a, e, 0

^

[P], [9]

、

[4>]

/ _ i， y

/—u

For certain speakers, the opposition between /h/ and /s/ is neutralized before i: hi /hi/ and shi /si/ are pronounced identically. The opposition is neutralized to the benefit of /h/ in the Kansai area (/hi/, /si/ = [hi]), to the benefit of /s/ in the Kanto area (/hi/，/si/ = [9i] or [pi])， as shown below. These mergers were already attested at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Kansai

Kanto

shima /sima/

[hima]

L9ima] / [pima]

‘island.

hima /hima/

[hima]

l^ima] / [pma]

‘(free) time’

The change in place of articulation of /s/ to [9 ] before /i/ can be regarded as an assimilation, since /i/ is a palatal vowel. But there is also a possibility that the coronal fricative /s/ has actually preserved its onginal place of articulation before l'\l in the modem language, since /s/ might have been a hushing, palato-alveolar segment before all vowels at an earlier date, as we have seen in section 3.5. [h] is very rare intervocalically in Yamato monomorphemes, where it has usually turned to [pp], [w], or disappeared, as will be seen in more detail in section 3.7.2. It occurs for instance in haha 4mum5, ho ho 4c h e e k ahureru 4to overflow5. The voiceless bilabial fricative (f), one of the allophones of /h/ before w, has been recently phonemized in newly introduced loans, so that it now occurs contrastively before vowels other than /u/, for example famirii ['^amiri:] {family}. So pairs such as hitto ['hitto] {hit}, and fitto ['(J)itto] {fit} which stand in opposition in this stratum can now be found. In older loans dating back to the beginning or the middle of the twentieth century, [h] appears regularly as the adaptation of {f) in Western loans before vowels other than [ui]: telehon ['terehoN] {telephone) (see also section 3.14).

7〇

CONSONANTS

37.1 Phonological correspondence between h, b, ana p A number of alternations involving h, p, and b deserve special consideration. Geminated /h/ is rendered as [pp], not *[hh]. Consider for example tne emphatic or expressive forms in (10a), as well as the Smo-Japanese compounds in (10b) which involve the CV > /Q/ process already discussed in section 2.5: ( 10)

/h h /> [p p ] a. Emphatic or expressive forms

yahari4 > yappari suki + hara > suki-ppara° su + hadaka。 > su-ppadaka b. Sino-Japanese compounds shutsu + hatsu >

‘actually’ ‘empty stomach’ ‘naked’

ic m + h o n

>

shup-patsu。 ‘departure， ‘one long oDject’ i p -port

(compare with ic h i + k a i

>

ik -k a i

‘one tim e，)

As we will see below, this can be accounted for diachronically, since modem

h derives from *p. It is only in some recent loans, for example gohho {(van) Gogh}, bahha {Bach}, and in a limited number of Sino-Japanese or mixed compounds, for example juhhari 4ten stitches, (Sino-Japanese + Yamato, Lawrence, 1999), ze/z/iMc/zow0 絶 不 調 4(to feel) awful’ （Sino-Japanese)， that occurrences of [hh] or [种 ] can be found. In Sino-Japanese words, h turns into p after the mora obstruent /Q/ and the mora nasal /N / (see also the examples in 14). For instance, the Sino-Japanese morpheme ^ 'h a lf is pronounced hatsu or patsu depending on the phonetic environment. (11)

h ^ p //Q /_ o r /N /_ ‘hair’ 髪 （Sino-Japanese) 白髪 /haku/+ /hatu/ hakuhatsu0 *white hair5 金髪 /kiN/ + /hatu/ kinpatsu0 ‘blond (golden) hair’ 結髪 /ketu/ + /hatu/ kep己atsu 。 ‘tied hair’

ん2加

The same alternation can occasionally occur in Yamato words, for instance nan(i) V h a t 5 + hito° person 5 becomes nan-pito° *what person5 (obsolete, nanbito° is more common) and suki- 'empty 5 + hara 4belly 5 becomes suki-ppara° ‘empty stomach’.

4 The adverb yahari is a mimetic which contains an intervocalic [h] root internally and is, as such, exceptional. It is sometimes considered to be etymologically a compound of ya 'arrow 5 and hari ‘tense’ （ 矢張り） .

/h/

71

[h] can nonetheless follow the mora nasal /N / in some cases. For instance, the Sino-Japanese morpheme ^ meaning 'brush, pencir occurs as pitsu in enpitsu0 'penciF but as hitsu in mannenhitsu ^fountain pen5. In both cases, the preceding morpheme ends in /N/. McCawley (1968:78) states that in native and SinoJapanese, the distribution between [p] and [h / 中] can be predicted on the basis of the syntactic information. He claims that [p] occurs after the mora nasal when the Nh combination is in the 'innermost layer of compounding5, as the following examples with hitsu 'pencil5, hun 'powder5, and hatsu 'emit5 illustrate: ( l 2)

鈴 筆

^ 2/ 7^ “ 。/eN / + /hitu/

en

/maN/ + /neN/ + /hitu/ (((man)(nen))〇2itsu)) ‘fountain pen’

nen

殿 粉 質 ゴ 伙 似

den

/

pun

nitsu

/den/ + /hun/ + /situ/ (((den)(pun))(shitsu)) 'starchy matter*

shitsu /siN / + /hatsu/ + /m ei/ ((shin)(〇2atsu)(mei))) 'new inventionJ

新発明

shin

‘pencil’

pitsu

万年筆

man

((en)(pitsu))

hatsu

mei

This is what has led McCawley (1968:77-78) to posit /p/ rather than /h/ in the underlying inventory of the native and Sino-Japanese strata, with a rule con­ verting /p/ into [h] word-initially and under the morphological conditions stated above, even though a few exceptions exist, especially in numeral compounds.

72

CONSONANTS

While it is true that McCawley5s analysis provides a satisfactory and simple account of most of the facts pertaining to the /z //? alternation, it is not followed by most native Japanese scholars, who, as Shibatani (1990) observes, find it very counter-intuitive. Note that there are still some cases which must be handled as exceptions. McCawley cites a dozen words or so which are not transparent compounds but still contain an intervocalic h, such as ahiru° 4duck\ haha ‘mother， （ see also section 3.2.). As mentioned in section 3.2. one can also find some wora-imtial or intervocalic /7 ’ s such a s 4head’， ‘dandelion ’， or pakuru 4to filch? in words of Yamato or Sino-Japanese origin (most are slang or familiar words). Another interesting example is the Sino-Japanese word c/zapa 加 0 茶 髪 ‘hair dyed brown’， whose second morpheme is 髪 ‘hair’， already cited in example (11) above. In chapatsu0,p is neither geminated nor preceded by /N/. This word seems to be an analogical formation recently coined out of kinpatsu0 'blond hair' to refer to brown dyed hair, a new hairstyle colour which became fashionable in Japan in the 1990s. A possible synchronic explanation of the fact that /h/ is rendered by /p/ after the special segments /Q/ and /N / is the following: /N / and /Q/ have no place of articulation of their own underlyingly. In order to receive full surface phonetic content before a consonant, these two elements require that the following seg­ ment should have a fully specified place of articulation, to which they will be able to link. However, the laryngeal consonant /h/ does not fulfil tms condition, since it can be regarded as placeless at the phonological and phonetic level (Ladefoged, 1982, 1990)5. This is arguably why the labial /p/ has been maintained after /Q/ and /N/. Another explanation would be that fricatives do not undergo gemination as easily as other consonants, in particular stops. A fricative occurring in a position or context in which gemination is likely to occur sometimes undergoes a change in manner of articulation, by a process which can be regarded as strengthening. The fricative takes the feature [—continuous], that is, it turns into a stop. As previously mentioned (see footnote 3, this chapter) the other voiceless rncative of Japanese, the alveolar /s/, displays the same tendency to occlusion in the event of gemination. In Modem Japanese，/h/ also works as the voiceless counterpart of /b/ morphophonologically, despite the fact that this role should be assigned to /p/ at the strictly phonetic, articulatory level. This is first manifest in the writing, since the kana denoting ba, bi, bu, be, and bo are derived from those denoting ha, hi, huf he, and ho by addition of the diacritics used to indicate obstruent voicing (the nigoriten, or dakuten example 13), in the same way as the moras starting with d, z , and g are derived from those starting with t, s, and k (see section 1.5).

Thank you to Kamiyama Takeki for pointing out to me the Ladefoged references.

/h /

73

The CV combinations starting with the voiceless bilabial stop p also take as a basis the k a n a starting with h, but they use a special symbol, the h a n d a k u te n ( 半 '濁 /S ), a small circle, which has appeared relatively recently in the history of the Japanese writing system, around the sixteenth century according to Okumura (1972). (13)

writing of p and b h : b ha hi hu he h o は h : p ha hi hu he h o は

K ana

ひ ふ へ ほ ひ ふ へ ほ

： ：

ba bi bu be b o ば pa pi pu pe p o ぱ

びぶべぼ ぴぷぺぽ

The phonological relationship between h and b is also manifest in the re n d a k u (連 濁 ‘sequential voicing’， see Chapter 4). The stop /b/ functions like the voiced alternant of /h/， for example in raみf + /z/如 0 > 如 が -/7/的 0 ‘traveller’ （‘travel’ + ‘person’). The special link between h, b , and p is further evidenced by a number of cases of alternation between these three consonants. Such alternations are mainly observed in the mimetic vocabulary and in numeral compounds of the form Numeral + Specifier. They are conditioned either by the phonetic environment (thus /h/ becomes /p/ or /b/ after /N/), by application of the re n d a k u rule or of post-nasal voicing (see Chapter 4)， or by register considerations in the case of mimetics. In some Yamato compounds, [pp] also works like a marker of com­ pounding, and thus fulfils a role somewhat similar to re n d a k u . Compare for instance the three free alternant forms su k ih a r a 0 / s u k ib a r a 0 I s u k ip p a r a 。 ‘empty stomach’ in the examples below.6 (14)

Alternation between /h/, /p/ and /b/ a. Mimetic words h a r a - h a r a (-to )

p a r a - p a r a ( - to )

b a r a -b a r a ° (-n i)

‘fluttering，scattering’ （with various stylistic nuances) b. Sino-Japanese compounds -h o n ^ : ip -p o n — 本 (specifier of long ‘ 1 long object’ objects):

—本 *2 long objects’

sa n -b o n ニニ#

n i-h o n

43 long objects’

hu夫 :

h u -s a i夫 妻

n in -p u 人 夫 :

jou-bu 。丈 夫

'ma-n'

'married couple5

‘labourer’

‘robust’

6 [pp] is not the only geminate which can mark compounding in parallel to rendaku. A few examples can also be found with other consonants, for instance korekkiri {kore° + kiri) *this and only this', decchiri (de + shin) 'chubby buttocks'.

CONSONANTS

74

c. Yamato compounds /ifl 歯 虫歯 ‘tooth’ ‘decayed tooth’

d e - p p a / d e - b a t i i ( っ)歯

‘buck teeth’

•SMた/-/^ ra。空 き 腹 似 た /-M m 。空 き 腹 た/-/7/泊 空 き 4empty stomach? (s u k i- *empty 5 + h a r a 'belly, stomach9)

っ 腹

The h I p I b alternation in numeral compounds is rather irregular. Some specifiers starting with /h/ occur with [b] after the numeral sa n ° 43' and the interrogative n a n i / n a n 4how many9 but keep [h] after jow 44 \ for instance h a i ‘cups， or /nK ‘small animal’， while others have [p] after ‘3 V 4 ，， ancThow many ’， for instance h u n Minute', h o u 4direction,, and so on (see (15)). All of them have [p] after ic h i *1 \ roku '6 \ h a c h i "S'Juu 4\ 0 \ by application of the CV > /Q/ rule presented in Chapter 2.5. So there are two sets of /h/ starting specifiers. Those which have allomorphs in [h], [b], and [p] and those which have allomorphs in [h] and [p] only, as the following examples show. According to Otaka (2009), the second type is more numerous than the first, but specifiers of the first type are of more frequent use.

h /p /b 杯 ‘cup’ ‘X cup(s)’

h / p / *b / ima? 分 ‘minute’ ‘x minute(s)，

1 ic h i

ip - p a i

ip -p u n

2ni

n i-h a i

n i-h u n

3 sa n °

sa n -b a i

sa n -p u n

4 yon

y o n -h a i

y o n -p u n

5 go

g o -h a i。

g o -h u n

6 roku

ro p -p a i

7 nana

n a n a -h a i

8

h a p -p a i

hachi

/ r o k u -h a i

/ h a c h i-h a i

ro p -p u n n a n a -h im h a p -p u n

/ h a c h i-h u n

9 kyuu

k y u u -h a i

k y u u -h u n

10 j u u

ju p - p a i / jip - p a i

ju p - p u n

'how many? n a n (i)

n a n -b a i

n a n -p u n

/jip - p u n

/h / 3 .7 .2

75

D ia c h r o n ic d e v e lo p m e n t o f / h i

The articulatory variety of /h/ in the modem language actually reflects the complex and lively history of this consonant in Japanese. The series of evolutions it has undergone is known as 心 -の 化 从 6>训 （ノヽ行 転 呼 音 ）in japanese iingUistics， literally ‘phonetic change of the sounds of the み-row，.

In Yamato and Sino-Japanese words, h is generally considered as going back to a labial plosive * p (Ueda, 1898; Hashimoto Sh., 1928; Martin, 1987). Archaic Japanese (or pre-archaic Japanese according to some scholars) would thus have had no laryngeal fricative, which explains why, in the oldest loans from Chinese, an original /h/ is regularly adapted as the velar /k/ in Japanese, while /p/ is adapted by means of the sound transcribed by the k a n a currently denoting the moras starting with the /h/ consonant (ぬ -反 ノ ヽ 行 ) . These facts point to the conclusion that the initial consonant of this graphemic series was not [h] but some other sound, most probably [p]. Some examples are given in the chart below. For the sake of comparison, I also provide the corresponding Sino-Korean forms, which very regularly maintain the original initial of the Chinese lexemes. (16) *h and *p in Old Chinese, and their reflexes in Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean Old Chinese Modem Modem Sino-Japanese Sino-Korean - ch */i:jp ^ 血 ‘blood， *huet ketsu hjol ‘China’ *han kan 漢 han 4perrume *hia〇 kou， kyou 香 hjag 一 ch * p •• j p f> ‘root， *puan hon pon 本 ^wave* *puar ha 波 Pha ‘cloth’ *pag hu, ho 布 pho Loans made by Ainu from Japanese are also revealing of the original value of modem /h/. For example, the Ainu word p o to k i Buddha*, a very old loan from Japanese, corresponds to the Modem Japanese form h o to k e / h o to k e 0. Since Ainu does possess a glottal fricative [h] in its system, the logical interpretation is that the Japanese word in question began with *p, not with */z, at the time of borrowing. In addition, in several modem Ryukyu dialects, /p/ corresponds very regularly to Japanese /h/: ]p h i / rk p i 4fire', jp h a ta k e 0 / rk p a ta k i 4field\ It is most probable that */p/ had evolved into a bilabial fricative as early as the Nara period (eighth century, Hashimoto Sh., 1928; Hamada, 1954), except in mimetic words. The bilabial realization cj) has been maintained up to now before /u/ in Standard Japanese and even before all the vowels in certain dialects of the Tohoku area and in the prefectures of Nagano, Shimane, and Nagasaki.

76

CONSONANTS

Around the tenth century, (J) is thought to have turned into w intervocalically (18a), until its complete disappearance, except before /a/ where it gave rise to [w]. Word-initially, it is maintained (18b) and remains labial at least till the seventeenth century. This is attested by the notations of Portuguese and Spanish missionaries, who transcribe fodo *degree\/ ^ > w evolution occurred subse­ quently, and at once. Another approach is that of Hamano (2000), who assumes that the evolution of */p/ towards /w / in intervocalic position has gone through the following stages: *p > *b > *P > *w.

7 It also seems that /h/ had remained a bilabial before /i/ until the nineteenth century in the Western dialects, according to the descriptions by Aston (1872) and Hoffmann (1868).

77

/m /

Here is a series of examples illustrating the evolution of */p/ towards /h/: (18)

a. Intervocalically (V _ V) *[kapa] > [ka4>a] > [ka'wa] *[sipo] > [si(j)〇] > [siwo] > [^i!o] *[ipe] > [i(})e] > [iwe] > [ije]8 > [i'e]

/kawa/ /sio/ /ie/

kawa shio ie

‘river， ‘salt， ‘house’

b. Word-initially (# _ )

*[partu] > [c[)arui] > ['harm] /haru/ haru ‘spring’ *[pikari] > [4)ikari] > [hika'ri] (/ [gika'ri]) /hikari/ hikari *light* *[puine] > ['(j)uine] /hune/ hune ‘boat’ The semi-consonant w having supposedly disappeared before e, o, and then /' between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, many sequences of two consecutive vowels VV in the modem language correspond in fact to a former VwV sequence, which in turn represents evolutions from VpV forms (see section 3.12). This series of changes explains why the glottal fricative h has almost disappeared from the Yamato lexicon intervocalically. It exists only in words resulting from a reduplication such as haha tmother,, hoho tcheek,, hata-hata° (hata-hata, hatahata) ^andfish', hara-hara 'flutteringly5,9 and in transparent compounds such as asa-hi d o m in g sun\ shira-hata° 4white flag', and shira-ho° *white saiF. These two types of words have maintained an internal h in order to ensure morphological transparency and paradigmatic identity of the morpheme, and to preserve the reduplicative character of the compound in the first case. Intervocalic [h] is also found in a couple of other exceptional cases such as a h u re ru 4to overflow' (presum­ ably a back formation from abureru) o v a h o u 4idiot, (Kansai dialect).

3.8 /m/ The bilabial nasal /m/ is realized as [m] in all positions. A rather peculiar segment realized as a moraic m (IPA [rp]) is sometimes heard in the speech of older speakers, or in certain forms of the traditional Japanese theatre. This nasal is found in words starting with um-, like ume° 'plum tree\ uma ‘horse’， umareru。 ‘to be bom ’， which are phonetically realized as [n^me], [r^'ma], [njmarerui], or even, if we follow Vance (1987:39), as [?m: ma] for uma. This seems to be the vestige of an archaic pronunciation, which must have

8 Concerning the evolution w e > y e > e, see sections 3.11 and 3.12. 办 ‘mother’’ and /10/70 ‘cheek’ the intervocalic fricative has first followed the general evolution rule h > wy as indicated by the Jesuit transcriptions faua for haha, and/o« (< *howo) for hoho. However, a phonetic reversal has occurred and the modem forms have reverted to haha and hoho. 9 It is interesting to note that in the words

78

CONSONANTS

been much more widespread formerly since it is well attested in documents of the Heian period.

3.9 /n/ The nasal consonant /n/ is apico-dental or apico-alveolar. A majority of Japanese phoneticians mention a palatal realization [ji] before the vowel i and the glide y, but it seems to me that palatalization is not very marked. The sequence nW frequently undergoes vowel deletion and subsequent transformation of /n/ into /N / (the moraic nasal) in familiar speech: た 的 た i*> kodomontoki, kodomontoki 'during childhood,, juugonichi > juugonchi 'the fifteenth (day)’ （Akinaga, 2008)•

3.10 THE STATUS OF THE VELAR NASAL [rj] The phonological status of the dorso-velar nasal consonant [q] (bidakuon or ga-gyd bion in Tokyo Japanese has been a much debated issue. The question is: is [q] a mere alternant of /g/ or is it phonemically different from /g/? Let us first observe that this sound does not possess its own symbol in the two ん< 3似2 syllabaries. It is transcribed with the 客たamz series: が ，ガ = [ga] or [ga]，ぎ ，ギ = [gi] or [〇i ] , ぐ ，グ = [gu] or [gu] ，げ ，ゲ = [ge] or [ge] ，ご ，ゴ = [go] or [go ].101 Second, the sound [rj] is regarded as a disappearing segment even in the dialects in which it is attested, as we will see in more detail below (Kindaichi, 1942; Inoue, 1971; Hibiya, 1999), although it continues to be, even now, held as a distinctive mark of ‘beautiful Japanese’. But g is absent in the speech of many speakers, where it is replaced by [g] or [y]. So, in many Japanese dialects, the [g] / [g] alternation is simply not relevant (see the Japan Linguistic Atlas for information concerning the dialectal distribution and phonetic realizations of /g /11). The study by Hibiya (1999) clearly demonstrates that there is a clear pattern of age stratification in the use of [rj], which drops off as age diminishes. Note however that the velar nasal [i)] is thought to have appeared relatively recently in Japanese, probably around the eighteenth century. It is generally assumed to be the result of a phonemic split out of the /g/ consonant, which has spread from central Japan (including the Tokyo and Kyoto areas), to outer regions (Inoue, 1971).

10 Pronunciation dictionaries sometimes transcribe the moras beginning with g as 力— キ

グ ゲ ゴ • 11 An electronic version of the maps of the Linguistic Atlas o f Japan (Nihon Gengo Chizu) issued by the Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyujo (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics) is available at: http://www6.ninjal.ac.jp/laj_map/04/01/.

THE STATUS OF THE VELAR NASAL [Q]

79

Next, in the speech of speakers who realize [g], the distribution of this sound is peculiar: [g] does not appear at the beginning of independent morphemes (19a). It is found only word-intemally (19b). (19)

a. goma 。 [goma] *[goma] geta 。 [geta] *[rjeta] b. kagami n ig e r u

‘sesame’

'geta (Japanese clogs )5

[karja'mi] *[kagalmi] [n ib em i] I n iig e n u ]

‘mirror’ ‘to flee’

These examples could suggest that [g] and [rj] stand in complementary distri­ bution in the speech of speakers who possess the two sounds, the velar stop appearing in word-initial position, the velar nasal in word-medial position. It would then be tempting to regard [rj] as a simple alternant of /g/ (as an idiolectal, sociolectal, or regional variant), with the following allophonic rule:

However, once again, things are not so simple. A number of small facts make the issue somewhat more complicated. First, there exist some cases of semantically relevant contrasts between [g] and [g]， as in the oft-cited pairs 办 ん (ゐ 毒 牙 ‘poison fang’ vs. do た (ゐ to - が ） 毒 蛾 ‘Oriental tussock moth’，ぬ /如 第 五 ‘fifth’ vs. ぬ / 取 醒 醐 ‘ghee’，yww^?十 五 ‘fifteen’ vs. 統 後 4home front’. But such examples of minimal pairs remain rare, and, for certain linguists, they do not justify the existence of an additional phoneme in the system of Japanese. Second, the conjunction ga ('but*) can be realized as [qa] even at the beginning of a sentence. One may also hear the sound [g] at the beginning of the words gurai° 4approximately or gotoshi0 *identicar (NHK, 1998) when they appear utterance-imtially as independent morphemes, even though they rarely do so. Lastly, the [g] / [g] alternation is not systematic. A non-initial /g/ is never realized as [rj] in mimetic or expressive reduplicated words (21 ), at the beginning of the morpheme g o (or go°) 'five* (22), after the polite prefix o- (23), and in recent loans (24.a) except if a velar nasal already exists in the source form (24.b):

8〇

CONSONANTS

(21) Reduplicated mimetic and expressive words gunya-gunya° [guinjaguinja] *[guinjaguinja] geji-geji° (geji-geji) [ge?,ige?,i] *[ge^ir)e?,i]

‘flabby’ ‘millipede’

However, reduplications expressing plurality or intensity undergo velar nasal­ ization, such as kuni-guni [kui mrjuini] 4countries5. But variation does exist, and descriptions are often contradictory. For example the adjective gyougyoushu 4ostentatious\ which consists of the reduplication of a Sino-Japanese morpheme followed by the Yamato suffix -shii, should be realized as [gjoigjoi'^nj, not *[gjo:gjo:'pii] according to Kamei (1956). Yet NHK (1998) indicates the pro­ nunciation [gjoigjoi'pii]. (22) Morpheme go *five5 juugo ['^uiigo] *[iるungo]

'fifteen5

Note that in the fully lexicalized word juugo-ya° [^.uiigoja] 'full moon night (4night of the fifteenth day5)*, where the morpheme go has lost its numeral meaning, the nasal, rather than the stop, appears. (23) Polite prefix oo- + genki [o'geqki] *[o'r)egki] ‘health’ o + 客waf。 [oguiaij *[oguiai] ‘（your) health’ (24) Recent loans a. Containing [g] in the. source word ragubii

['raguibi:]

*[ raguibn]

b. Containing [g] in the source word hangaa ['harjga:] or ['hagga:]

‘rugby’

{hanger}

The word igirisu0 [igirisui] England*, from the Portuguese {Ingles} probably belongs to the case depicted in (24b). As for compounds belonging to types other than those which have just been mentioned, the situation is somewhat murky. Three cases exist: certain words regularly display [g], for example + g打a。 > 如 [hijoVigeta] lgeta for dry days5; others always maintain [g], as shiro + goma° > shiro-goma° [pirogoma] ‘white sesame’；a third group licenses the two realizations [g] or [g], for example [kepigomm] or [kepigomui] ‘eraser’. Curiously enough, in compound words whose second member starts with /g/ and wmch fulfil the conditions for rendaku application (see Chapter 4), /g/ may not undergo nasalization; for example kuro + goma° (4black? + 'sesame*) becomes kurogoma° [kuirogoma] rather than *[kuiror)〇ma] 'black sesame' (Kamei, 1956). Hibiya (1999) states that when the second element of a compound is a single Sino-Japanese bound root starting with /g/, the root initial /g/ is realized as [g], as

THE STATUS OF THE VELAR NASAL [g ]

81

in 如 即 保 護 ‘protection’ [丨 hogo]. It is important to note that descriptions such as dictionaries or articles do not necessarily concord with each other. The reader should consult Vance (1987) who provides a very rich list of examples and a review of the Japanese literature concerning the velar nasal issue. Vance (1987) also remarks that in three-character Sino-Japanese compounds of the shape (X) +(YZ), /g/ seems not to be nasalized at the beginning of Y as in the example /dai+gen.soku°/ dai-gensoku *major principle* (with [g]). On the other hand, in words of the shape (XY)+(Z), we seem to get [〇] after the major division, for instance /zi.dai°+ geki/ jidai-rjeki 'period drama\ According to Akamatsu (1997:130), the fluctuation between [g] and [rj] can be accounted for by two main causes: demographic movements and speakers5 age. According to this scholar, the generalization of the [g] realization in internal position results from the influence of non-standard regional pronunciations in which [g] does not exist, due to the migrations after the end of World War II. It would have then spread among younger speakers. As already mentioned, [rj] occurs less in the speech of the younger generation. Yuzawa and Matsuzaki (2004:20) show that [rj] has practically disappeared in the speech of Tokyo speakers under forty, whereas it occurs in the speech of nearly all speakers over eighty. According to Hibiya (1999), analyses of real-time data have all indicated that native speakers of the Tokyo Yamanote dialect had word-internal [r)] until at least the late nineteenth century, and so the decline of [rj] must have started in the early twentieth century. It is heading towards completion in the younger generation of today. Since the status of the velar nasal constitutes one of the most debated issues in the phonology of Japanese, it seems interesting to present in more detail two extremely different and complementary approaches, each quite representative of its time and tradition: the treatment proposed by Ito Junko and Armin Mester, published in 1997, which belongs to the most recent Western theoretical pros­ pect, and that by Kindaichi Haruhiko, published in Japan in 1942, which draws meticulous attention to the data and variation in a sociological dimension, and which is very characteristic of the Japanese linguistic tradition.

3.10.1 ltd and Mester’s treatment (1997) In tneir 1997 paper, the linguists Ito Junko and Armin Mester proposed a novel analysis of the phonology of rj in Japanese. They observe that the two follow­ ing cases are observed in compounds whose second member begins with g: (i) possible variation between [g] and [g] at the compound juncture; (ii) no variation, only [rj] is possible. The first type is that of words whose second component starts with an underlying /g/ in isolation (examples (25)), the second type concerns words which start with an underlying /k/ and have undergone

CONSONANTS

82

rendaku voicing (examples (26)).12 As we shall see in the next chapter, rendaku is a morpho-phonological process of Japanese which requires the initial conso­ nant of the second member of a compound to become voiced under certain conditions. (25)

/g/ —^ [Q] 〇r [g] in compounding

niwa° + geta° > niwa-geta° / niwa-rjeta0 ‘garden clogs’ shima° + gara0 > shima-gara° / shima-rjara° ‘striped pattern’ (26)

/k/ ^ [rj], *[g] in compounding

yuki + kuni° > yuki-rjuni ^yuki-guni ‘snow country’ ori + kami > ori-rjami ^ori-garni 4origami’ The difference shown in the above examples between an underlying /g/ and a /g/ induced by the rendaku of an underlying /k/ is quite puzzling. Ito and Mester (1997) proposed a particularly elegant analysis of these facts. Their proposal accounts for, on the one hand, the asymmetry between niwa-geta° / niwa-rjeta0 in (25) and yuki-rjuni / ^yuki-guni in (26), but also, on the other hand, for the impossibility of velar nasalization occurring in reduplicated mimetic words as shown above in (18), as well as for the existence of minimal pairs such as dokuga and doku-rja. The analysis by Ito and Mester (1997) is cast within the framework of Optimality Theory. Four main constraints are used: (27)

*[〇

*g IdentL S

Id en tS S

is prohibited initially in a prosodic word. Voiced dorsal obstruents are prohibited. Lexical-Surface correspondents are identically specified for [nasal]. The bound form of a stem is segmentally identical with its corresponding free form. q

To account for the rendaku-inductd [q]^, as in yuki-rjuni for example, it is necessary, in addition, to refer to the S eq V oi constraint (sequential voicing, i.e. rendaku), which stipulates that the second component o f a compound starts with a voiced consonant. This constraint is the highest in the hierarchy together with *[q. The relative hierarchy between these two constraints remains unspecified.

12 For the sake of legibility and consistency, some notational and presentational adaptations are made in the presentation below.

83

THE STATUS OF THE VELAR NASAL [ 〇 ]

The analysis supposes that the two constraints *g and I d en t S S are unranked, or freely ranked, with respect to each other, thus providing an account of the observed variation. Free-ranking of these two constraints entails the derivation of two possible outputs in cases where the second component starts with [g] in isolation. Recourse to two different hierarchies, or to one hierarchy with two constraints left unranked with respect to each other, constitutes a traditional treatment of variation in Optimality Theory. The hierarchy (adapted) is as follows: a.

(2 8 )

I d e n t SS » ^[rj, S e q V

oi

»




»

I d e n t LS

し 3 > > I d e n t SS ン

b.

The choice between hierarchies (a) and (b) is left open by the grammar. Compare now the tableaux for niwa° + geta° niwa-rjeta0 and yuki + kuni° yuki-rjuni, both with the nasal, with respect to the two hierarchies (accent will not be indicated in the tableaux). (29) niwa + geta garden clogs 5 a. Hierarchy (28a)：I d e n t SS l e x ：/ n i w a - g e t a /

» Se q V

oi

I d e n t SS

I d e n t LS

su rf: [g e ta ] ^

5f

[ n iw a g e ta ]

5f

[n iw a g e ta ]

b.

Hierarchy

( 2 8 b ) : 冷g > > I d e n t SS

lex : / n i w a - g e t a /

Se q V

oi

*8

I d e n t SS

I d e n t LS

冷

5f

s u r f ：[g e ta ] [ n iw a g e ta ] ず [ n iw a g e ta ]

*\

CONSONANTS

84

(30)

yu ki + kuni

'snow country'

a. H ie r a r c h y (2 8 a ):

IDENTSS »

lex : / y u k i- k u n i /

Se q V o i

I d e n t SS

I d e n t LS

su rf: [k u n i] 冷

[y u k i g u n i] ^

[y u k i i]u n i] [y u k i k u n i]

b. H ie r a r c h y (2 8 b ): lex : / y u k i - k u n i /

»

I d e n t SS Se q V

oi

I d e n t SS

I d e n t LS

su rf: [k u n i] [y u k i g u n i] ^

[ y u k ir j u n i]

冷

*

[y u k i k u n i]

[g] is allowed in internal position in n i w a - g e t a (29a) because it satisfies the I d e n t S S constraint which is ranked higher than *g. In other words, n i w a - g e t a is possible because /g/ is identical to the autonomous surface form g e t a , whereas ^ y u k i- g u n i in (30a or b) is not because /g/ does not appear in the autonomous surface form k u n i. In (29b), n i w a - i j e t a is the best candidate because it does not violate *g, which outranks I d e n t S S in the alternative hierarchy. In this model, the possible variation between n i w a - g e t a and n iw a - r je t a thus results from the free-ranking of *g and I d e n t S S . However, in y u k i + k u n i ( 3 0 ) , the two different ranking scenarios do not make any difference to the output. With either ranking, the same candidate y u k i- r ju n i is selected. Candidate ^ y u k i-g u n i cannot emerge as the winner since the /g/ consonant does not reflect a segment present in the autonomous form of the lexeme k u n i (violation of Id e n t S S ). Consequently, under both hierarchies, the winner is y u k i- r ju n i. Lastly, to account for the case of reduplicated mimetic stems, in which I g l occurring at the beginning of the second part is never nasalized, Ito and Mester adopt McCarthy and Prince (1995),s analysis, calling upon a well-known con­ straint in Optimality Theory, the constraint IdentB ase-Reduplicant, which they place above *g.

THE STATUS OF THE VELAR NASAL [g ]

85

IdentB ase-R eduplicant requires identity between the base and the reduplicant, so a surface form like ^ g a r a - r ja r a is not optimal. Neither is ^ r ja r a - r ja r a because, according to the proposed hierarchy, prohibition to have a velar nasal rj at the initial of a word is ranked very high. Under these conditions, g a r a - g a r a is the optimal candidate. The analysis by Ito and Mester is appealing in many respects. It has strong explanatory capacity, and makes it possible to achieve a unified treatment of seemingly disparate facts, in particular with regard to the obligatoriness of r) resulting from the r e n d a k u of [k]. In addition, the general principles which govern their analysis seem independent of the formal framework they use, which still reinforces the interest of their approach, and is likely to give it lasting value, irrespective of the evolutions of the theory. The g / ij alternation basically comes down to a paradigmatic uniformity issue. However, this analysis is not without its defects, in particular concerning the data. The main criticism which one can formulate has to do with the empirical basis of the study. It explicitly presents the patterns of optional or obligatory alternations as systematic, implying that the data are firmly established and indisputable. However, this is far from being so because exceptions are easy to find. For example, according to authors as normative as Amanuma et al.(1989) or NHK (1998), who deal precisely with the variety of Japanese adopted by Ito and Mester, certain compound words whose second component starts with /g/ in the free base form, such as /z/;y0 r/0 + 如0 ‘ 如 for dry days’ or s/hVo+ gcwifl0 ‘white sesame’， have only one possible realization, the first with the nasal [hijo'rigeta], the second with the stop [pirogoma]. In addition, words containing a r e n d a k u frequently present variation between g and rj for speakers who do possess the velar nasal, but the conditions which determine the variation remain unclear (Kamei, 1956; Kinaaichi,1942). It would also have been relevant to refer to the results of Kindaichi’s survey, which we will present below, since it is precisely the inter- and intraspeakers5variations investigated by Kindaichi that Ito and Mester are interested in. In sum, the data do not seem representative enough of the Japanese language at the end of the twentieth century, and it does not either seem to be the variety described inprevious studies, for example Kindaichi^. Interestingly, the study is supposed to concern the variety of language spoken by the 'older residents of the Yamanote area’ of T6ky6, ‘which forms the basis for the modem standard language’ and ‘is reflected in standard pronunciation dictionaries’. This is precisely the variety of language, taken from that very same Yamanote area, which Kindaichi Haruhiko investigated in his 1942 study.13

13 The speakers targeted by Kindaichi's survey in 1941 were aged fifteen or sixteen and were Yamanote residents. They must have reached an age over seventy in 1997, the date Ito and Mester

86

CONSONANTS 3 .1 0 .2

K i n d a i c h i ’s t r e a t m e n t ( 1 9 4 2 )

During the winter of 1941, the linguist Kindaichi Haruhiko conducted a sociolinguistic survey in ajunior high school of the Suginami district of Tokyo, located in the Yamanote area, which forms the basis of Standard Japanese. The survey consisted of the reading out loud of a list of 13 words, comprising an internal velar likely to be realized as [g] or [g], by seventy 15- and 16-year-old students, bom and raised in the capital. Firstly, the results of this investigation provide evidence for the extreme variety of the realizations among the speakers. Three different groups can be distinguished: speakers who realize all the /g/?s as [g] (21 speakers), speakers who realize them as [g] except in the word j u u g o 'fifteen* (20 speakers), and speakers who present one or the other realization (29 speakers). Secondly, the survey establishes that the use of [g] or [rj] also depends on the words: some lexemes are more frequently realized with [g] or [g] than others. Thus k a ig u n 4the navy, presents the [g] realization in 70% of cases, while a m a g a s a (or a m a - g a s a ° ) Umbrella7 exhibits the nasal [r)] in more than 67% of the examples. But all the words tested do not present a clear and constant tendency. There is only one word for which all seventy speakers provide a uniform pronunciation: j u u g o tfifteen, with [g]. Also, as Kindaichi observes, k a ig u n 'the navy5 and c h u u g i *fidelity5, the two words most frequently realized with [g] are Sino-Japanese lexemes. This suggests that this class of word is less prone to velar nasalization. It will be noted that a m a - g a s a / a m a - g a s a ° 'umbrella5and h a - g a k i ° 'postcard5, which have the highest rate of [g] realization, are Yamato compound lexemes which contain r e n d a k u . However, one should nevertheless note that more than 30% of the speakers, including speakers who do have [〇] in some other lexemes, do not nasalize the r e n d a k u compounds a m a - g a s a ( a m a g a s a 0) and h a - g a k i ° at the time of the investigation in 1941. Moreover, Kindaichi observes that g i and g u are less often nasalized than g a , g e , and g o . He also raises the possibility that the [g] realization occurs more frequently in the second mora than in the third mora of a word. Lastly, his work supports the thesis that women tend to be less conservative than men socio-phonetically, since they utter fewer [g]’s than men. We are thus clearly dealing with a variation phenomenon whose conditioning, both internal and external, is complex. In addition to the strong inter-speaker diversity, quite remarkable within such a homogeneous group as far as age and

published their paper, that is, they precisely fall into the category of speakers that Ito and Mester's study is supposed to concern.

THE STATUS OF THE VELAR NASAL [g ]

87

sociocultural background are concerned, the survey brings forth several other internal factors likely to favour the appearance of the velar nazalisation: the lexical stratum of a given word, its length, its degree of autonomy, the degree of lexicalization in the case of compounds, the morphological status of the velar as a word boundary, the nature of the vowel which follows the velar, as well as the position of the mora containing the velar in the word. Noting, at the time of the investigation, that almost all the subjects over thirty have [rj] in internal position, while this allophone was less widespread in the younger subjects5 realizations, Kindaichi predicted the progressive disappear­ ance of [q] to the benefit of [g] in all contexts. Posterior works, in particular the linguistic survey whose results are described by Inoue (1993), have regularly confirmed this prediction ever since. The progressive disappearance of [r)] not only in Tokyo but also in other areas of Japan where this sound used to be widespread is under way. Kindaichi also saw a structural reason for the disappearance of [r)]. According to him, the existence of a velar nasal intervocalically in Japanese is a vestige of the time when all the word-internal voiced stops were prenasalized. Thus for­ merly one had [mb], [nd], and [Qg] where the modem language generally has [b], [d], and [rj] ~ [g] (see also Chapter 4). When prenasalized consonants began to undergo reduction to one single segment, [mb] and [nd] passed to / b / and /d/. Things went differently for [rjg] because that sound started to phonologize into /〇/ in a number of dialects. The reason is that since the velar nasal /r\/ did not exist as a phoneme in the system, such phonologization of [rj] to /g/ made it possible to maintain or to create the following new oppositions: m ! b f n /d , a n d r j/g , where r) filled a gap. The reason why this did not happen in the case of [mb] and [nd], which did not become /m/ and /n/ but rather /b/ and /d/, is because labial and alveolar nasals already existed as established phonemes. The reduction of [mb] and [nd] to /m/ and /n/ would thus have involved the loss of many oppositions; for example * k a m b e 'wall5 becoming * k a m e would have merged with k a m e 4tortoise’， while んわe was not in competition with any existing form. On the other hand, the evolution of k a r jg e 4shade9to k a r je was not likely to create confusion since rj did not exist as a contrastive unit. During the twentieth century, according to Kindaichi (1942), the tendency is that of [g] evolving back to /g/, on the model of the evolutions [mb] —>/b/ and [nd] —►/d/. The disappearance of [q] would thus constitute the final stage of a diachronic process of major importance in the history of the Japanese language, the evolution of wmch can be traced over several centuries: that of the denasa­ lization of the prenasalized voiced obstruents, a topic which will be addressed again in the next chapter.

88

CONSONANTS

3.11 / y / ( A N D P A L A T A L IZ A T IO N )

The dorso-palatal glide /y/ (IPA [j]) functionally stands as a consonant in the moraic units y a f yu , y o . It can also appear after another consonant in the form of a palatalization. Every Japanese consonant excluding the glides y and w has a palatalized counterpart known as yo o n ^ p1.However, it is especially after the consonants /k/, /g/, /t/, /s/, /z/, and /h/, and in Sino-Japanese words that palataliza­ tions are most frequent. After /r/, palatalization is generally rare, and impossible in the mimetic stratum (see section 3.13 below). As seen in section 2.8, the presence of j does not change the prosodic weight of a given rhythmic unit: kyu counts as one mora, just as ku, y u , or u do. The palatal element must be considered as attached to the first position of the prosodeme (onset), as represented in (31): (31) Palatalized consonant

八丨 k y a Palatalization is always noted y in phonological and Kunrei transcription. The Hepburn romanization is less consistent because it renders the palatalized com­ binations /sy/, /ty/, /zy/ as sh, ch, and j , as already indicated. The element y only occurs before the vowels /a/, /u/, /〇/. The combination of y with /i/ is impossible in all lexical strata: *yi, ^kyi, ^m yi, etc. do not exist. It seems that this has always been so in Japanese. The glide y is also absent before /e/, except in some very recent loans or in certain dialects, in particular in the Kyushu island. Recall though that sh e /sye/ [^e] occurs in certain speakers5speech instead of se [se] but in a non-distinctive way: for example sh e /sye/ [pe] 'back5(standard s e , see footnote 2, this chapter). But /ye/ did exist in the archaic language. Phonetically, /e/ and /ye/ were distinguished until the middle of the ninth century approximately before merging to /ye/ in a majority of dialects, as observed by the European missionaries of the sixteenth century: y e d o (for e d o °, the ancient name of Tokyo), y e , modem e 4image \ It is only from the seventeenth century on that the [je] pronunciation of y e started changing into [e]. The two impossible combinations */yi/ and */ye/ concern vowels which have a palatal articulation in common with the dorso-palatal glide /y/. The same type of

/ y / (a n d

p a l a t a l iz a t io n )

89

restriction applies to /w/, the dorso-velar glide, which does not appear before the back (or velar) vowels /u/ and / 〇/. Consonantal palatalization is not original in Japanese. It is generally consid­ ered to have appeared in the language under the influence of Chinese loans. Indeed, palatalizations are particularly frequent in Sino-Japanese morphemes. They occasionally occur in Yamato words like kyou 4today \ but this is always the result of a secondary development, already mentioned in section 2.7.2. In the familiar register, palatalizations are also frequent and generally not recorded in writing. We find s o r e h a ° > s o r y a ° 'this + Topic marker5, i t t e h a ° > it c h a ° (/ittya/) ‘going + Topic marker’ （ in these two examples, remember that the topic marker h a is actually pronounced w a ) , to iu (actually realized as t o y u u ° ) > c h u u ° (/tyuu/) ‘so called’ (all of Yamato origin). The appearance of the palatal element is explained by the presence of the front vowel /e/ in the first two examples, and by that of /i/ or /y/ in the last one. Palatalizations are also widespread in mimetics (see below), as in ‘flabby’， as well as in recent Western loans. Note also the frequent insertion of y after /k/ or /g/ in Western words like k y a p a s n i t u {capacity}, or k y a r a m e r u 0 {caramel}, that reflects the place of articulation of the velar stops /k/ and /g/ in English and other European languages, which are more phonetically fronted than the Japanese equivalents. There exist some C^V / CV (almost) free alternations, such as kyuu ~ ku ‘nine’， レ /syak e/ 〜 /sake/ ‘salmon，. The alternations Aw ~ 从 / andyw ~ ゾ7 (/syu/ ~ /si/ ，/zyu/ ~ /zi/)， as in / 57zz>7ゾ7たw。 （place name), already discussed in section 2.4, are very frequent (this phenomenon is termed c h o k u o n k a 直音イ匕 )• Lexicalized alternations of the sort yV / /， such as んw。 / /たw。 ‘to go ’ ， y u u ° / iu ° 4to sa y \ yoi /11 4good5, can also be found. In a number of cases, palatalization is secondary and works like a phonaestheme associated with the connotations of childishness, instability, uncoor­ dinated movement, diversity, lack of elegance, excessive energy. This is particularly so in mimetic words (Hamano, 1998, originally published in 1986). Thus beside p o t a - p o t a , which suggests an idea of dropping, one finds p o c h a p o c h a (/potya-potya/), which refers to splashing. This type of palatalization normally occurs on the rightmost coronal consonant of a bimoraic mimetic root (32a). If the rightmost consonant is not a coronal, then the initial consonant will undergo palatalization, whatever its place of articulation (32b). Although Alderete and Kochetov (2009) show that, because of the paucity of relevant examples, there is no real empirical basis supporting the assumption that palatalization affects the leftmost of two non-coronals ( p y o k o - p y o k o / ^ p o k y o - p o k y o in 32b) or the rightmost of two coronals ( d o s h a - d o s h a / ^ d y o s a - d y o s a 32a), the overall argument put forward by Hamano (1998) and subsequently by Mester and Ito

9〇

CONSONANTS

(1989) remains valid and in conformity with native speakers’ intuitions•し The onlv exception to tms rule is /r/ (32c), wmch cannot palatalize when it occurs in the second mora of the root, an issue which will be rurther discussed in section 3.1 (32) a. C2 of mimetic root = coronal k a sa k a sa k a syakasya 私k y a s a k y a s a dosadosa

d o syadosya

^ dyo sa d yo sa

‘dry objects scratching each other’ ‘something falling heavily’

b. C2 of mimetic root = non-coronal pokopoko

pyokopyoko

^ pokyopokyo

za b u za b u

zyabu zyabu

^ zabyu zabyu

‘hopping around’ ‘splashing’

c. C2 of mimetic root = /r/ n o ro n o ro n yo ro n yo ro ^ n o ryo n o ryo korokoro

k yorokyoro

^ k oryokoryo

‘wriggly and curving movement’ 'looking around restlessly?

Such palatalizations of an expressive nature occur also sporadically elsewhere: thus, the personal suffix - s a n becomes - c h a n (/tyaN/) after children^ names and diminutives (note also in this example the passage of /s/ to /t/, which can be interpreted as consonant strengthening, see section 3.6). Overall palatalization is also characteristic of baby talk.

3.12 /w /

The labiovelar glide /w/ is slightly less rounded than its English counterpart (for instance in w a y ) . Its phonetic realization is between that of the symbols [iq] and [w] of the IPA. It can be regarded as the semi-vocalic version of the vowel /u/ [tu] from the articulatory point of view, but functionally, it behaves as a consonant. In the modem language, /w/ occurs only before /a/. The combinations /wi/, /we/, and /wo/1 415 have all existed at earlier stages of the language but have disappeared in Modem Standard Japanese. However, they are making a timid come-back in Western loans. On the other hand, */wu/ never existed, [o] o and [wo] w o merged around the year 1000 to w o , a pronunciation which was still heard by the first European missionaries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They wrote u o or v o for (read o in Modem Japanese). The group [wi] w i

14 For analyses of this secondary palatalization, which may be regarded as an autosegment, and some of its theoretical consequences, see Hamano (1998) and Mester and Ito (1989). 15 The object particle is sometimes romanized as wo, but this is a purely orthographic conven­ tion, that does not reflect the presence of the glide /w/ in the actual realization of the particle.

/w /

91

reduced to [i] i around the thirteenth century. As for [we] we, it first merged with ye around the thirteenth century. Thereafter ye evolved to modem [e] (see the preceding section). The first Western romanizations of the Muromachi period write coye for the modem form koe 4v o ic e \ which in turn comes from an earlier form kowe. The existence of w in this word is also visible in the allomorphic form kowa- for koe, which appears in a number of compounds such as kowa-iro° 'quality of voice? (on the alternation ela in compounds, see section 2.3). The reasons for these changes, which involved a significant decrease in the sound possibilities of the language, can first be found in the low functional load of the oppositions at hand, i.e. the small number of minimal pairs involving an opposition between V and w \ . Since the moras consisting solely of a vowel occurred only at the beginning of independent simplex words in Archaic Yamato Japanese, this was the only position in which the loss of the glide was likely to create a new homophony. In Sino-Japanese words, the sequences ye, we, wi, and wo were too rare to cause any problematic opposition losses. The disappearance of ye, we, wi, and wo also illustrates a strong trend in the phonology of Japanese (see the charts in section 3.15 for statistical data): maximal contrast is favoured between the two constituents of the basic prosodeme (the mora), so that the statistically most frequent CV combinations mostly involve a voiceless stop + vowel, or a nasal + vowel (a noteworthy exception is the combination r + V, which will be addressed in the following section). So it is hardly a surprise that the combinations between a semi-consonant and a vowel articulatorily close to it (w + u / 0 and y + i / e,as well sls w + e) were the first to disappear. Moras of the CvvV shape (called が } ^ / 2 合 糊 音 in the traditional terminology) existed up until recently in certain Sino-Japanese words, for example okwashi お 菓 子 ‘cake’，gwG/た 外 国 ‘foreign country’. They reflect the presence of a labial glide in the Chinese original forms. Old Chinese accepted /w / after a large variety of consonants, but, apart from a small number of exceptions attested in documents of the Heian period, it is only after the velar consonants /k/ and /g/ that /w / could be found in Japanese. Although the combinations /kwa/, /gwa/, /kwe/, /gwe/, /kwi/, and /gwi/ all existed, only /kwa/ and /gwa/ have been maintained until the middle or end of the nineteenth century, and still exist nowadays in certain dialects, mainly in the Tohoku or Kyushu areas. The tendency towards w-lenition seems to continue in the modem language: /w/ is often deleted before /a/ in very familiar speech. Thus one will often hear maaru° instead of mawaru0 4to turn5 (see also the remark in footnote 5, Chapter 2), bia for biwa 'medlar tree5, akannai for wakaranai 'not to understand,, koiya° for kore wa° 4th is\ or atashi0 for watashi0 *r (but there exists a pragmatic difference between the two forms of this pronoun; watashi0 is rather neutral whereas atashi0 has a girly connotation). More generally, tins phenomenon seems to pertain to an overall weakening process of the labial

92

CONSONANTS

articulations in Japanese. Recall that */p/ has evolved to /h/ or to zero, that /w/ has disappeared before /i/, /〇/, and /e/, that the labiovelar /kw/ and /gw/ have reduced to /k/ and /g/, and that /u/ is only very slightly rounded. Even the nasal /m/ is no exception to this: in the familiar language, it sometimes undergoes total deletion in fast tempo speech, for example s u i m a s e n for s u m im a s e n 'excuse meJ. One might wonder whether the causes for this tendency to delabialization are not cultural rather than properly linguistic. The progressive disappearance or near disappearance of labials in the phonological system might be related to a search for a certain immobility or facial impassibility. Hagege and Haudricourt (1978) refer to a cause of a similar nature to explain the absence of labials in the Iroquoian adult language. Note, in addition, that lip protrusion or exaggerated labialization in the articulation is culturally codified as an expression of anger in Japanese. Conversely, delabialization is connoted as a mark of calm and selfcontrol, which are martial qualities eminently praised in the traditional culture.

3 . 1 3 /r/

The prototypic realization of the only Japanese liquid /r/ is [f], the apico-alveolar flap. According to Matsuno (1971),[r] should be considered the neutral realiza­ tion of the rhotic in the language because its articulation is central compared to other variants. However, /r/ displays a large number of social, geographical, or combinatorial variants. Outside [r], the following phonetic (social or regional) realizations are attested:[1]，[U，[r], [r:]，[d]，[[]，[ち]. The apico-alveolar lateral[1]is a common variant, frequent before palatalized vowels { r y a , r y u , r y o ) and in young women's speech (Ohnishi 1987; Tsuzuki and Lee 1992). Retroflex [[] is also encountered under the same conditions. The short and long apical trills, [r] and [r:] are socially marked variants, characteristic of colloquial or even vulgar Tokyo male Japanese. For instance, street thugs and yakuzas (gangsters) are easily recognized by their strongly trilled /*, at least in the movies, where it is one of their conventional attributes. The higher the number of trills, the more socially marked as vulgar the speech will be. The voiced alveolar stop [d] is a combinatorial variant which is frequent word-initially in certain dialects, or in children's speech. It can also occur word-intemally. The retroflex [[]might be encountered initially before /u/, or intervocalically in sequences such as /ere/, /ara/, /uru/, /oro/ (Tsuzuki and Lee, 1992). The voiced lateral fricative [^] is a combinatorial variant occurring before the high vowels /i/ and /u/. It is also the most common realization of /r/ in some Ryukyuan dialects. Phonetically, /r/ is also by far the shortest of all Japanese consonants (Sagisaka and Tohkura; 1984, Kurematsu, 1997).

/r/

93

In addition to its phonetic diversity, Japanese /r/ stands out as a segment exhibiting many idiosyncratic peculiarities, which make it unique in the phono­ logical system of the language. In Archaic and Old Japanese, /r/ does not appear at the beginning of independent Yamato morphemes. Nevertheless, although absent at the beginning of Yamato lexical words, /r/ is paradoxically the most frequent (or second most frequent depending on the counting method) of all consonants inside Yamato words (including mimetics), in Old Japanese, and in Modem Japanese alike (see Labrune, 1993, and Labrune, forthcoming, for a detailed presentation of various statistical data, and Figures 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 at the end of this chapter). In Old Japanese, two /r/'s never co-occur within a single word, that is, there can be only one /r/ per word. This co-occurrence restriction is especially remarkable in verb stems. Whereas -ru is the most frequent verbal inflectional ending in Old Japanese (Yoshida K .,1976:87,101),it is not attested after roots which already contain an /r/ (Kuginuki, 1982). Thus, while kaheru, inoru, m u saboru and so on are well-formed and attested Old Japanese verbs, forms with more than one /r/ such as ^kiroru, ^aram aru , or ^som oriru are impossible, and are indeed unat­ tested, but for one exception (hiroru 4to spread, to widen?).16 The same type of co-occurrence restriction is also operative in Old Japanese nouns and other parts of speech. Moreover, the distribution of /r/ within words is peculiar， since /r/’s are more likely to occur late in words. Kuginuki (1982) establishes that out of 614 words of the archaic language containing a rhotic, 543 occurrences (88.4%) of those /r/5s appear in the la st mora of the word. In other words, the closer to the end of the word, the higher the probability for finding /r/. For Kuginuki (1982), such a distributional pattern makes sense if one supposes that /r/ developed relatively late in the history of Japanese. His hypothesis is that /r/ was originally added to the phonemic inventory in order to increase the length of words, which were mostly one or two mora long in pre-archaic Japanese. Japanese being a suffixing language, these newly added r-moras are expectedly most frequent at the end of words. Another remarkable feature of /r/ in Old Japanese is that it stands in comple­ mentary distribution with the zero consonant since moras made of a single vowel never appear word-intemally, and 厂does not word-initially. In a well-known paper dealing with palatal prosody in Japanese mimetics in relation to feature predictability and underspecification in Modem Japanese

16 This principle is not totally preserved in Modem Japanese (cf. oriru 4to get down5, ireru° 'to insert'), but even in the modem language, most verbs containing two occurrences of /r/ are compounds involving two stems, or are derived by adjunction of the suffix -eru, which is an innovation of the PreModem language.

94

CONSONANTS

(see examples (32) above), Mester and Ito (1989) claim that /r/ is the unmarked sonorant of Japanese and that it is underspecified for the feature [Coronal]. Building on Kuginuki’s insight and on Mester and It6 (1989)’s proposal that /r/ is actually the unmarked sonorant of the system, I have argued in Labrune (1993, forthcoming) that /r/ primarily developed in Proto-Japanese as a default, epenthetic consonant in the intervocalic position by virtue of an 'Emergence of the Unmarked’ mechanism (McCarthy and Prince，1994) and that the conditions of its development bear on its present-day characteristics. The evidence suggesting that the phonological behaviour of/r/ is that of a phonologically inert, transparent consonant that lacks phonological content is the following. First, as already discussed in section 3.11,/r/ fails to undergo palatalization, an important phonological process which occurs in a systematic fashion in the mimetic stratum according to Hamano (1998). Recall that /r/ behaves in an exceptional manner in mimetics because it cannot be palatalized when it occurs in the second mora, so that noronoro (32c) does not yield ^noiyonoryo but nyoronyoro. Moreover, the presence of /r/ in the root does not block the palatalization of anon-coronal in the first mora. So /r/ actually behaves like a non-coronal with regard to the palatalization process depicted in (32). Note that palatalized /r/5s can be encountered in lexical strata other than mimetics, so that /ryV/ is not an impossible sequence in Japanese. However, the difference between mimetic palatalization and non-mimetic palatalization results from the fact that in mimetics palatalization acts as a 'feature-sized morpheme5(Mester and Ito, 1989) which can be productively attached to a root under the conditions stated above. The second process to which /r/ is transparent in Japanese mimetics, and also in other strata of the lexicon, is gemination. For instance, in -ri suffixed mimetic adverbs (Kuroda, 1967; Mester and Ito, 1989 citing a personal communication by Poser), when the second consonant of a C1VC2V root is voiceless, suffixation of the adverbial ending -ri may cause C2 to undergo total gemination in cases where it is a voiceless obstruent (33a), or partial gemination (i.e. prenasalization) in cases where it is a voiced obstruent or a sonorant (33b). However, in cases where the consonant in question is /r/, neither gemination nor prenasalization can normally occur (33c). (33)

a. C2 = [—voiced] —^gemination Base -ri adverbial bata battari ‘with a bang’ kaki kakkiri ‘exactly’ goso gossori ‘entirely，

/r/

95

b. C2 = [+voiced] ^ prenasalization gena gen n ari ‘to satiety， s h im i sh in m iri ‘intimately’ b o n ’y a r i boya ‘absent-mindedly’ ya n w a ri yaw a ‘gently’ koga kon g a ri ‘to be nicely roasted brown’ m a ji m a n jir i ‘sleepless’ c. C2 = /r/ ^ nothing happens k oro

korori

l^ k o r r o r i

l^ k o n r o r i

‘without effort’

Fully geminated /r/Js are also unattested outside the mimetic lexicon in the Yamato and Sino-Japanese strata, and they are only marginally reported in Western borrowings and in some recent mimetic derivatives (Schourup and Tamori, 1992:137). As for the moraic nasal /N/ + /r/ sequence, it does occur in Sino-Japanese and Western borrowings, and in a few mimetic forms. However, in such cases, it represents a recent development and is to be phonologically analysed as a combination of two distinct segments rather than the result of a prenasalization process in the strict sense. According to Mester and Ito (1989), total gemination of /r/ is impossible because it violates the Nasal Coda Condition requiring all voiced sonorant codas to be nasal. Even if one does not adhere to a syllabic analysis of Japanese but to a moraic one according to which /N/ stands as an autonomous prosodeme (mora) as we do in this book, the basic interpretation by Ito and Mester remains valid: /N/ needs to acquire its place articulation features from the following consonant. So partial gemination (= /N/ insertion) is impossible because /r/ is underspecified, and thus has no distinguishable parts available for separate linkage. Schourup and Tamori (1992) have criticized this analysis, arguing that the non-occurrence of palatalization with /r/ in mimetics is best explained by articulatory difficulty. However, one can object that articulatory factors alone cannot account for the many other properties of /r/ in Japanese. Thirdly, /r/ is the most unstable of all Japanese consonants, both diachronically and synchronically. Throughout the history of Japanese, /*V moras have fre­ quently undergone syncope ( d e a r u > d a (copula), k a r i t e > k a t e , k a t e 'provisions’；see also Kishida (1984) for additional examples) or unexpected addition (paragoge, k a b u ° > k a b u r a 0 turnip% s h i p p o / s h i p p o r i (accent unknown) *tair [dialectal]; see also Labrune (1998b)). As a recent trend of Tokyo Japanese, it has also been observed that rV sequences frequently turn into /N/ or /Q/, for instance w a k a r a n a i > w a k a n n a i 4not to understand\ s o u s u r u t o > s o u s u t t o 'doing this7 (Akinaga, 2008). Moreover, unlike most other consonants, /r/ is never the cause of an assimilation process in Japanese, that is, there are no cases where a

96

CONSONANTS

consonant would assimilate to /r/, whereas /r/ frequently assimilates to a sur­ rounding segment (Labrune, forthcoming). The liquid also plays a central role in the morphology. It is crucially involved in the verbal flexion, where it can be regarded as epenthetic (de Chene, 1985; Labrune, 1996), as the following data illustrate: (34) Verbal inflexion Consonant final base Vowel final base ‘to see， ‘to write’ m i-r-u basic form k a k - u m i-n a i negative k a k -a n a i m i-v -e b a hypothetic k a k - e b a mi nominal k a k - i ( k a k - i) k a k -i-m a s u m i-m a s u polite m i-r-a re ru k a k -a re ru passive m i-ro imperative k a k - e Observe that, before vowel-initial endings (-m, - a n a i , - e b a , etc.), no consonant surfaces when the base ends in a consonant, contrary to what happens after a vowel-ending base. According to de Chene (1985) and Mester and Ito (1989), consonant-stem suffixes display the basic form of the suffixes, and initial /r/ in vocalic-stem suffixes is epenthetic. What is significant here is that the surfacing consonant is precisely /r/. The verbal morphology of Old Japanese provides further arguments for analysing /r/ as an epenthetic consonant (Labrune, 1996). Furthermore, /r/ is also extremely frequent at the beginning of several other nominal, adjectival, and verbal suffixes in the pre-modem language, such as - r a (plural, directional),- r a / - r o (adverbial), - r a k a (adjectival ending), - r a k u (nominalizer), - r u (passive, potential),- r i (adverbial),- r i (aspectual auxiliary), -re (deictic suffix), -reru (passive, potential, honorific auxiliary), -ro (imperative suffix), and -ro (a particle of obscure function in Archaic Japanese). Most of these r-beginning morphemes are attested in the archaic language, and are still widely used in Contemporary Japanese. The behaviour of /r/ in the phonetics, phonology, and morpho-phonology of Japanese is thus characteristic of what any theory of phonology, whether struc­ turalist, generativist, or OT-ist, would recognize as an unmarked, default segment.

3.14 NEW C O N S O N A N T S

A number of new phonic possibilities have recently developed in the Japanese language due to the influence of borrowing. Two different types of new

NEW CONSONANTS

97

consonants can be distinguished: those which result from the phonologization of sounds already existing in the language but with no phonemic status，like/[中] or v [JJ], and those which represent new phonotactic combinations, that is, a sound which is already granted phonemic status in the native or Sino-Japanese system has come to acquire new combinatorial possibilities. For instance / y / y , /w/ w , /ty/ ch, /zy/y, /sy/ sh now combine with e, /d/ d now occurs before / or u as [d], /w/ w occurs after other consonants (kwa, g w o ) , and t s before vowels other than m, as shown in the following chart. (35) she, je, che: tsa, tsi, tse, tso: ti, di, tu, du\

[^e]

[?.e]

[tpe]

シエ

ジユ

チェ

[tsa]

[tsi] クイ

[ti]

[dil

[tse] ツェ [tUJ]

[ts〇]

ツァ

卜ク

ド、ゥ

ティ

tyu, dyu:

[tjui] テュ

fa ,fi,fe,Jy u ,fo :

ソォ

[dui]

[djiu] .

ミ

[扣 ]

[糾

ファ

フイ

フエ

フュ

フォ

_

[Pi]

_ ]

[Pjui]

_

[P〇]

ヴァ

ヴイ

ヴ

ヴュ

ヴェ

ヴ才

[wi]

[we]

[WO]

ゥィ

ウェ

ウ才

kwa, kwi, kwe, kwo:

[kwa]

[kwi]

[kwe]

クァ

クイ

クェ

ク才

gwa, gwi, gwe, gwo:

[gwa]

[gwi]

[gwe]

[gw 〇]

グア

グイ

グェ

グオ

va, vi, vu, vyu, ve, vo: ye:

[4>jm]

[je] イエ

wi, we, wo:

[kwo]

Concerning the three last series beginning with w -, kw-, and gw-, note that they are not always realized as one mora. One often hears the bimoraic sequences [uii], [uie] for wi and we, and [kuia], [guii], etc. for Icwa, gwi, etc. Most of the above combinations are only found in loanwords which have been borrowed in the past twenty or thirty years, and in the speech of speakers whose sociolinguistic profile is urban, educated, and feminine (Inoue, 2002). It is important to make a clear distinction between the katakana transcription, which may contain sequences such as those cited above (or even other sequences), and the actual pronunciation, which is often more conser­ vative, and does not always faithfully reflect the kana spelling. Some people (mainly older speakers) write ノ く ー テ ィ ー {party) but actually

98

CONSONANTS

pronounce [^ait^i:] p a a c h i i or ['paite:] p a a t e e , thus avoiding the new phonic combination [ti]. The following chart provides some examples of recently borrowed words containing new phonetic possibilities (underlined). (36)

/

fa m ir ii

[丨4>amin:j

ファミリー

ti

tis s y u

[丨 き

ティッシュ

ts i

ts ii r u

UI] [丨tsiirui]

sh e

sh epaado k w o o ts u

[^e'paido] ['kwoitsui], ['kuioitsui] [Pin丨 te:?>i] [jerui'saremui]

シェパード

kwo V

v in t e e j i

ye

yeru sarem u

ツィ一ル

クォーツ

ヴィンテージ イェルサレム

{fam ily} {tissue} {Ziel} (German ‘goal ’） )shepherd (dog)) (quartz} {vintage} {Jerusalem)

The combinations/a, ti, tsi, she, kwo, and ye in the above examples actually represent a broadening of the phonotactic possibilities of already existing seg­ ments. These either exist as allophones of a given Japanese phoneme (for instance [$] is an allophone of /h/, [ts] an allophone of /t/), or as true phonemes with limited distribution in the rest of the lexicon. This is the case for y, which only occurs before a, u, and o, and for w, which only occurs before a, in the Yamato and Sino-Japanese strata. In this case, it is the combination of y and w with vowels other than those admitted in Yamato or Sino-Japanese words which represents an innovation. It is interesting to note that some of these combinations have existed at an earlier stage of the Japanese language, or still exist in dialects, for instance lew, tsa, ye, she. The sound transcribed as ヴ in ん (v in Hepburn) is never realized as a labiodental voiced fricative. Its most common realization seems to be [b]. It is pronounced [(3] by some speakers, a sound which is an occasional variant of /b/ in the intervocalic position (Kamiyama T., p.c., and Saito, 1997) for certain speakers in Yamato and Sino-Japanese words. However, this Japanese [(J] seems to be much less fricative than the corresponding Castilian Spanish sound in lobo for instance. In sum, we can say that all the ‘newly introduced sounds’ are not really new: they already exist in the Japanese language. The only innovation is that they are now granted a phonemic status. Other sounds still await a proper and non-ambiguous transposition. Let us mention for instance those consonants which function as a syllable coda in the source language. Both English/が and Italian/〇加 are adapted as フ ァ ッ 卜 / ta n d a 'only, or t a b i > t a n b i 4time5(Hamada, 1952). The complementary distribution of /Q/ and /N/ in the above examples pleads in favour of an analysis which treats the specification of nasality as pre-existent to /N/ insertion, and thus views nasality as an inherent, constitutional feature of the phonological structure of the Japanese voiced obstruents, as we shall see more thoroughly in section 4.1.6. 4 .1 .3

I n s ta b ility a n d tr a n s p a r e n c y

Another striking characteristic of the Japanese voiced obstruents is their instabil­ ity. Both diachronically and synchronically, one observes many shifts from a voiceless consonant to a voiced one, or from a voiced one to a voiceless one, as in the following examples (the symbol / indicates variation in synchrony, while > marks variation in diachrony): (3)

Voiced/voiceless obstruents alternations h o ta ° / b o t a ° / h o d a ° ‘firewood’ s h ita -ts u z u m i / s h ita -z u ts u m i ‘smack of lips’ k u r a i。 I g u r a i 。 ‘approximately， to u b o k u > to u h o k u 。 ‘Province of the North-East’ t e n g a > te n k a ‘all the country’ a b u re ru > a h u reru ‘to overflow” k a m i-g a k u ra > k a m i-k a g u ra ‘sacred dance’ ts u k u m u > ts u g u m u ‘to be silent’ sa w a k u > sa w a g u ‘to be noisy’

In classical poetry, there exists a literary device, k a k e k o t o b a , consisting of a pun based on homophony, in which a sequence of sounds was used to suggest more than one meaning. Interestingly, voicing can be transparent or irrelevant in k a k e k o to b a . For instance, in poem 423 of the K o k in s h u (dating from the begin­ ning of the tenth century), we find the following k a k e k o to b a . Capitalized letters

I 〇6

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

indicate the sounds for which voicing distinction is not relevant, allowing double interpretation of the meaning. (4) Voicing transparency in k a k e k o t o b a k u b e k i h o D o to K i su g in u r e y a

‘the moment it should have come has passed’ Or ‘the nightingale that should have come’ This verse also contains the noun for the nightingale, h o t o t o g i s u , in the sequence h o d o t o k i s u ( g in u r e ) , if one ignores the voicing distinctions. Consider­ ing the fact that such poetry was first composed to be sung aloud, it appears that voicing differences were felt as secondary and did not impede the understanding of the poem. This type of pun actually still exists in Modem Japanese. In g o r o a w a s e , a popular mnemotechnic device for remembering phone numbers, dates, pass­ words, and so on, numbers may be read following their different allomorphs corresponding to a number of phonetic values (native Japanese, Sino-Japanese, or even English, each number has generally more than four or five possible read­ ings), in order to be used to cue words or phrases (see Schourup, 2000, for a detailed study). Interestingly, a voiced number can cue an unvoiced one, and vice versa. For instance, the phone number of a taxi company is 3563-5151, which reads s a , g o r o u - s a r f , k o i, k o i 4well, come and pick me up Mr 0 〇^ !? (Goro is a popular male name).1 Here, the digit 5 which normally reads g o (in Sino-Japanese) is used to cue both the mora g o in G o r o u - s a n 4Mr Goro* and the mora k o in k o i *come!\ Similarly, in a study of Japanese rap rhymes, Kawahara (2007) reports that consonants diftermg only in voicing are frequently treated as similar. It is also interesting to observe that in Japanese dictionaries, the difference between an unvoiced and a voiced consonant is not taken into account for the ordering of the headwords. Thus the entries k a r a 'shelF, k a r a d a ^ody1, g a r a cdesign5 will appear in the following order: k a r a , g a r a , k a r a d a . The difference between k and g is simply ignored.^ Ohno (2005) also mentions the fact that recent loanwords in the modem language are sometimes pronounced with different voicing values, for instance a m e j i s u t o for {amethyst}, b a t o m i n t o n for {badminton). Finally, let us also note the following phenomenon: in a sequence of the shape CiVC2V, where Cj is a voiceless consonant and C2 the same consonant in its

1 Example found on the web in May 2009 in the Japan Times online, 'Canny Japanese playing it by the numbers’， by Mark Schreiber,13 June 2002. ^ The same goes for h, p, and b, whose difference is ignored in the ordering of dictionary headwords. We will find hari 'needle', bari T a n s ', before hariai 'rivalry'.

GENERAL PROPERTIES OF JAPANESE VOICED OBSTRUENTS

I 〇7

sonorous version, haplology frequently occurs in Old and Middle Japanese, in the same way that it occurs between two strictly identical consonants: for example m a s h ij i evolved into m a j i 4will not, ought not (auxiliary)5, k u h ib is u i ^ k u p ib i s u ) into k u b is u 0 4a heer (Yamaguchi Yoshinori, 1988a:203). 4 .1 .4

H is to r ic a l d e v e lo p m e n t o f v o ic e d o b s tr u e n ts

A large number of intervocalic voiced obstruents have developed out of conso­ nant clusters containing a nasal segment, as illustrated in the following examples: (5) h u m ite > k a m ip e > s u m is u r i > ik a n ik a >

10th century 20th century h ude° ‘brush, pencil’ koube 4Kobe? su zu ri ‘inkstone’ ik a g a ‘how’

ネ hunde > ネ kambe > ^sunzuri > ^ikanga >

We also know, from the transcriptions in the Latin alphabet made by European missionaries during the Muromachi period, and the notations found in Chinese and Korean materials of the same period, that a vowel preceding a voiced obstruent used to be realized with a nasalization. Thus we find, in the documents written by the Iberian Jesuits, romanizations such as N a n g a s a q u i for N a g a s a k i (place name), v a r e r a n g a for w a r e r a g a (4weJ), and so on. This nasality is noted in an especially regular manner before /g/ and /d/. It presumably disappeared progressively during the Edo period, but note that it is still occasionally heard in the modem language in the speech of certain speakers of the Tokyo dialect, and very regularly in the dialects of the Tohoku and Tosa (Shikoku) areas. In the standard language, the ^ alternation, which was discussed in section 3.10, can be regarded as the last vestige of this once widespread nasalization. Most linguists agree today in considering that the voiceless/voiced opposition used to come down to an oral/nasal opposition. According to Yamaguchi Yoshinori (1997), /b/ would have corresponded to [mb], /d/ to [nd], [nd3 ], or [ndz], /g/ to [g]， and /z/ to [ndz], [nd3 ] in the archaic language. Then, prenasalization disappeared in the following order according to Inoue (1971): /(d)z/ > /b/ > /d/, and finally /g/ (see section 3.10 for details concerning the velar nasal [rj]; see also Yamane-Tanaka, 2005, for a discussion of the connection between the loss of prenasalized stops and the history of voiced obstruents within the OT framework). For Hayata (1980), phonologically voiceless consonants were all phonetically voiced intervocalically in pre-archaic Japanese, while phonologically voiced consonants were prenasalized. However, this hypothesis does not reach full consensus among Japanologists. Hayata also claims that it is under the influence of Cninese loans一 where voiceless consonants occur intervocalically一 that the

I〇8

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

system of Japanese might have undergone restructuring. Intervocalic conso­ nants would have remained voiceless in Japanese when they were so underlyingly, while voiced consonants would have started to lose prenasalization. This assumption is not very different from that of Hamada (1960), who also con­ siders that the voiceless/voiced opposition has developed under the influence of the Chinese loans, and that prior to the Chinese influence, the opposition was not relevant in Japanese. Only a phonetic opposition would have existed, the obstruents being voiced between two vowels, but in a non-distinctive way, in a manner reminiscent of what occurs in Modern Korean. One of the arguments in favour of this analysis is that the voiceless/voiced difference was not recorded in the documents of the Heian period and even after. However, a counter­ argument exists, which would contradict the absence of a distinctive opposition between voiced and voiceless obstruents in Archaic Japanese. Some of the oldest documents (in particular the K o j i k i and the N i h o n s h o k i ) denote very accurately the presence of a voiced obstruent in the passages transcribed in Japanese, a notation which later, from the Nara period on, became suddenly optional or erratic, hence a serious problem. The rather sudden disappearance of voicing indications in the oldest documents actually constitutes one of the most mysterious enigmas in the history of the Japanese language, as we shall see in the next section. 4 .1 .5

R e p r e s e n t a t i o n in th e w r i t i n g , p a s t a n d p r e s e n t

Unlike the Latin alphabet, the modem k a n a writing system captures in a quasi iconic manner the natural link which exists between a voiced and a voiceless obstruent. Voicing of an obstruent is transcribed, in h i r a g a n a and k a ta k a n a , by the addition of two superscript diacritic dots (the d a k u te n Voicing dots5) on the right side of the k a n a used to denote the mora starting with the corresponding voiceless consonant (see section 1.5). The written symbol for the voiced sound is thus derived from the voiceless one, in a uniform manner. This notation actually reflects the morpho-phonological status of voicing in Japanese obstruents in a rather appropriate manner, because obstruent voicing often appears, as we shall see, as a secondary, derived property. However, the notation of voicing in the k a n a system is rather recent. Voicing has been indicated in a systematic way in the common orthography since the middle of the twentieth century only. The d a k u te n used in the modem k a n a writing system are actually the product of a long and complex history. It is interesting to look back at its development across the centuries because it sheds interesting light on the phonological nature and perception of the voicing feature in the Japanese language.

k

GENERAL PROPERTIES OF JAPANESE VOICED OBSTRUENTS

I 〇9

First, one has to consider the question of the recognition of the voicing opposition in Japanese documents. Is voicing indicated or not? In the K o jik i (712 ad) and the N ih on sh oki (720 ad), two of the oldest Japanese texts, the voicing opposition is nearly always precisely and accurately noted in the sections written in Japanese or transcribing Japanese nouns (these two documents also contain parts written in Chinese). The writers used m a n y d g a n a (Chinese char­ acters that are used for their phonetic reading in Chinese or Japanese), the ancestor of kana. For instance, to transcribe the moras ku and gu, they use the following characters: (6)

Sets of m a n y d g a n a used to transcribe the moras ku and gu in the K o jik i and the N ih onsh oki (eighth century) Z:m: 苦 gM:具

、 ロ 、 久 、 倶 、 玖 、 来 、 etc. 、 愚 、 虞 、 遇 ， etc.

This mode of transcription is radically different in spirit from the one used today since there did not exist a single and uniform diacritic mark to denote voicing. Moreover, this system does not capture the phonetic and phonological link which exists between a voiced and voiceless consonant in the system. In the M an 'ydshu , a collection of Japanese poetry whose compilation was completed arouna 760 a d , the written distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants becomes loose, and even absent in a number of poems. For instance, poem 3645 uses the same character S to transcribe the sound ki in o k i 'offing' and g i in w ag im o k o *my lady*. In the texts in prose which flourished during the Heian period (794-1185), when the m a n 'yd g a n a progressively gave rise to the hiragana by way of simplification, the voicing distinction disappears completely in documents written in h ira g a n a (see Seeley, 1991 on the history of Japanese writing). One single kana is used to represent both the voiced and voiceless version of a given CV mora. Posterior texts in k atakan a such as the H ojoki (1212) follow exactly the same principle. However, we know from the first missionary accounts of the Muromachi period in the Latin alphabet (for instance Rodriguez, 1604-1608) that the voicing distinction had a phonemic status in Japanese since it is consistently transcribed in the first documents in the Latin alphabet. It is only in the Edo period (1604-1868) that a written distinction between voiced and voiceless obstruents reappears in printed kan a documents, by means of the daku ten , but even in the Edo period the notation of voicing was neither systematic nor consistent. To sum up, whereas the voicing distinction is regularly and faithfully tran­ scribed in the earliest m a n y d g a n a texts, it disappears within a few decades with

110

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

the completion of the k a n a systems during the Heian period, before reappearing during the Edo period several centuries later. The temporary disappearance of the voicing opposition in the orthography constitutes one of the most intriguing mysteries in the history of the Japanese language. Whatever the exact reason for this fact, what we must retain is that voicing was not felt to be as distinctive as other features for many centuries. For details about the precise interpretations of these facts, see Labrune (1998a) or Ohno (2005) and the references cited therein. Next, we shall look at how voicing was shown in cases where it was. As pointed out above, different m a n y o g a n a were used in the oldest texts to denote voicing differences. From the Heian period on, the voicing distinction is denoted only in k a n b u n style texts, that is, texts written by the Japanese in Chinese. A practice starting from the twelfth century makes use of a mark, posted onto a Chinese character, or onto the k a n a symbol written next to a Chinese character, in order to indicate that its pronunciation contains a voiced obstruent. The marks used vary greatly depending on the texts, writers, or regions, especially in the older texts. They may consist of a small circle, full or empty, or two circles, sometimes two or three triangles, placed in one of the four comers of the square which contains a character, or they may affect the k a n a placed next to the character. Interestingly, the initial function of such marks was to indicate the tone of the character (in its Chinese pronunciation) but soon enough the mark also came to denote the voicing status of the consonant, in conjunction with the tone. Some texts make a marking distinction between ‘original voicing’ 油 /:w本 濁 ） and 4new voicing, ( s h in d a k u that is, voicing resulting from r e n d a k u or post­ nasal voicing (see sections 4.2 and 4.3). One also finds a very curious manner of voicing transcription consisting of writing a given k a n a under its mirror image to indicate the presence of voicing (cf. Kokugo Gakkai, 1992, Tsukishima, 1977, or Labrune, 1998a, for reproductions of the original documents). In the course of time, the so-called d a k u te n , that is, the two dots placed at the top right comer of a k a n a as we know them today emerged as the most common mark. It is extremely interesting to look back at the evolution of the utilization and value of the modem d a k u te n , because it is an established fact that d a k u te n were originally used for the indication of tone. In this respect, it is quite paradoxical to observe that they were used in documents written in Chinese characters, a system that is basically logographic, whereas they were not used in k a n a texts, even though k a n a is a truly phonographic system. Some scholars have posited that the voicing distinction was consistently made in older texts because those were written by people who were well trained in Chinese, and were used to distinguish voiced from unvoiced (Hamada, 1960; Ohno, 2005). Less educated people had more trouble in making the distinction because it was less distinctive than it is in Modem Japanese. We must not exclude the possibility that d a k u te n were

GENERAL PROPERTIES OF JAPANESE VOICED OBSTRUENTS

III

primarily developed as an aid to understand and pronounce foreign languages (Chinese and Sanskrit) in kanbun texts, mostly written by monks. If this is the case, it could mean that it is only in this type of text that the voiced/voiceless opposition was felt to be really distinctive, underlying the fact that it was not so in native Japanese (Yamato Japanese). However, it remains hard to understand why voicing was accurately transcribed in the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki, the earliest texts in Japanese, except under the hypothesis that these documents might have been written by non-natives, for example Chinese or Korean scribes.

4.1.6 The internal structure o f voiced obstruents In Labrune (1999), I proposed a theoretical treatment of the phonological struc­ ture of voiced obstruents within the representational framework of autosegmental phonology and feature geometry (Clements and Hume, 1995). The idea is that voiced obstruents are intrinsically specified for nasality. I argue, first, that voicing on the surface as it presently occurs in the modem language can be accounted for by the presence of a nasal specification in the internal structure of the consonant under a Spontaneous Voicing (SV) node (following the proposal by Piggott, 1992). Second, I claim that voiced obstruents in Yamato words possess two root nodes under a single skeletal position, and must therefore be viewed as heavy segments. (7)

Internal structure of voiced obstruents (Labrune, 1999) (Place features are omitted) ^

root

*

SV

•

Place

[nasal] In the older language, voiced obstruents corresponded to two skeletal positions, the first one being carried out as a prenasalization. In other words, /b, d, g, z/ (surface [mb, nd, rjg, nz]) were contour segments. This representation also helps to understand why they sometimes alternate with voiceless geminates, as in /m•ぎ/ + （ く m/ぎ/- パがw め / ‘right side’. In the modem language, nasality is now implemented, in a majority of cases, by means of a voiced feature at the surface level.

112

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

This approach which regards voiced obstruents as containing a nasal specifica­ tion at the level of their infra-segmental structure is confirmed by the evolution process these consonants have gone through during the history of Japanese (see the next section). It also accounts for certain modem forms where the presence of an inter-morphemic n is apparently unexplainable, for example in on -dori° ‘cockerel’， ゐ n 。 ‘hen’ （from o ‘male’，me- ‘female’， and 砂 7•。 ‘bird’ )， た パ -わgc/i/ ‘hornet， （from ‘bear’ and /zflc/z/0 ‘wasp’）. There also exist many doublets of the type ko b u / kon bu 4sea tangle5, togaru / ton garu 'to be sharp5, to b i / to n b i 'kite (milvus migrans)\ ta b i / ta n b i 'time5. In all such cases, it is not possible to posit the presence of a rendaku , of the particle no, or of any other morphological element since we are dealing with simplex words. These modem examples containing a prenasalization are simply vestiges of a former state of the language. They reflect a once widespread pronunciation of the voiced obstruents as prenasalized segments, as is still found in a number of modem dialects.

4.2

RENDAKU

Voicing also plays an essential role in Japanese morphology because it functions as a compounding marker, a process known as たm(連 濁 )， literally ‘sequential voicing’， or ‘connective voicing’. R en daku consists of a phonological alteration which occurs at morpheme juncture when two full morphemes enter the formation of a compound word, resulting in the voicing of the initial obstruent of the second component. It affects /k, s, t, h/, which become respec­ tively /g, z, d, b/.3If the second element of the compounding starts with a segment other than k, s, t, h, that is, an already voiced consonant like b, d, z, m , n, /*, w , y, or by a vowel, no transformation can occur, except for the velar voiced consonant /g/ which may (but in a non-obligatory way) be nasalized as [q] in the speech of speakers who have this allophone of /g/ in their system (see section 3.10). Consider the following examples. (8)

um i + kam e

‘sea’ + ‘turtle’ k u ro

+ satou

u m i-gam e°

(or um i-gam e)

4sea turtle, ku ro-zatou

‘black’ + ‘sugar’

*brown sugar’

kaki + tsu ra i0

kaki-zu rai

‘writing’ + ‘difficult’

‘hard to write，

3 On the transformation, see section 3.7. Note also that the voiced counterpart of the mora tsu is zu in the romanized transcription of Modem Tokyo Japanese which has been adopted in this book (see section 3.3).

I

RENDAKU se + hone

113

s e セo n e 。

‘back’ + ‘bone’

‘backbone’

te + k a k i

t e - g a k i°

‘hand， + ‘writing，

‘handwriting’

m o m e ° + k o to

m o m e -g o to 。

‘discord’ + ‘thing’

‘trouble，discord’

As can be seen fromthese examples, r e n d a k u not only occurs when combining two nouns but also with other types of combinations such as Noun + Verb ( te - g a k i° ) , Adjective + Noun ( k u r o - z a to u ) , Verb + Noun ( m o m e - g o t o ° ) , Verb + Adjective (k a k iz u r a i), and so on, except, as we will see below, in Verb + Verb compounds. The principal problem raised by the Japanese r e n d a k u is due to the unpredict­ able and apparently random character of its appearance. Take for instance the oftcited example of the two Japanese syllabaries* names (Martin, 1952). K a t a k a n a / k a ta k a n a ( k a t a / k a t a ^ide' + k a n a ° 4letter,) has not undergone r e n d a k u of the second constituent so k a n a remains voiceless, whereas the second syllabary, h ir a g a n a / h i r a g a n a 0 / h i r a g a n a ( h i r a 4flatJ + k a n a ° ) , presents a r e n d a k u . However, it is often said that nothing in the combination mode, the origin, or the phonological structure of the morphemes implied could explain this differ­ ence.4 Examples of this type are not hard to find. In addition to h ir a g a n a and k a ta k a n a , let us mention for instance: (9)

* a s h i- g u s e 。 ‘(particular) way of walking’

a sh i

+ k u se ‘foot’ + ‘habit’ vs.

a s h i-k u s e 。

k u c h i° + k u s e

k u c h i- g u s e ° * k u c h i- k u s e °

‘mouth’ + ‘habit’

‘favourite phrase’

y u k i + ta r n a

y u k i - d a m a ° * y u k i- ta m a °

‘snow’ + ‘ball’ vs. m iz u ° + t a m a ‘water’ + ‘ball’

‘snow ball’

+ to r i° ‘sea，+ ‘bird’ vs. n iw a ° + t o r i° ‘garden’ + ‘bird’ um i

m i z u - t a m a ° ^ m iz u - d a m a °

‘water ball (water drop)’ u m i - d o r i ^ u m i- t o r i

‘sea bird. n iw a -to r i° * n iw a -d o r i°

'rooster.

However, the words katakana and hiragana also differ accentually. Katakana is always tonic, with penultimate or antepenultimate accent (katakana, katakana), while hiragana is tonic with final or penultimate accent, or atonic {hiragana, hiragana or hiragana0).

114

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

Moreover, many examples illustrate the fact that the two modes of compound­ ing, with and without rendaku, can exist in parallel for the same compound, without any difference in meaning or even in usage between the two, as in warukuchi / waru-guchi 4calum ny\ kenkyuu-sho° / kenkyuu-jo° 4research centre\ nori-tsuke° / nori-zuke° pasting5, kami-kakushi / kami-gakushi 'disappearance (of child) (lit. 'hidden by the gods,)J, kaki-tome° / kaki-dome° 'registered mair. Many scholars explicitly or implicitly follow the view that rendaku appearance is the default, elsewhere condition when two lexemes enter compounding, if some specific blocking factors such as the ones to be presented below in section 4.2.2 are not involved. Rendaku can thus be viewed as the materialization of a dependency link which exists between two lexemes on the occurrence of compounding. Whether rendaku is still productive is a matter of controversy. Ohno (2000) has conducted an experiment which demonstrates the usage-based conditioning of rendaku application. He argues that native speakers refer to a semantically and/or phonetically parallel existing compound in order to determine whether a novel compound must undergo rendaku or not. If there is no existing parallel rendaku form, the item will not undergo rendaku in the novel compound. For this author, speakers simply memorize whether rendaku occurs for individual compounds, and so synchronically rendaku would just be the lexical residue of a rule which was once productive and automatic. However, the data presented by Fukuda and Fukuda (1999), cited in Kubozono (2005), tend to demonstrate that rendaku is still productive, which suggests that more research is still needed on this question.5 Rendaku has sometimes been regarded as a fossil of the determination particle no or of some other particle containing either a nasal (such as ni, which marks the agent, the recipient, the locative, the attributive, among others), or a voiced obstruent (such as d e , locative marker). This would explain why, as we shall see in section 4.2.2, rendaku does not appear in coordinative (dvandva) com­ pounds, in Object + Verb compounds, or in mimetics, where there is no syntactic or semantic reason to assume the underlying presence of a particle like no, ni, or de. This is the analysis proposed by Lyman (cited by Yamaguchi Yoshinori, 1988b), Vance (1982), and Hirano (1974, cited by Takayama M .,1992). Thus for example yama-gawa° 'mountain river, is a determinative compound which would derive from yama no kawa 4mountain? Det. 4river,, whereas yama-kawa 'mountains (and) rivers\ a coordinative compound, is the simple juxtaposition,

5 See also below the example taken from a story by Hiraide Takashi, which illustrates the fact that native speakers are sensitive to meaning differences expressed by rendaku even in compounds that they have never heard before.

RENDAKU

115

on the morphological and semantic levels, of yama and kawa, hence the absence of rendaku. Incidentally, it is interesting to observe that rendaku sometimes alternates with voiceless consonant gemination (Takayama T . , 1995), as in migi-gawa° / migikkawa° "right side5, de-ba / de-ppa 'protruding teeth\ hitori-go / hitori-kko ‘only child’， で-ぎ/W0 ‘once (and) for all，that’s it ， ， suki-ppara° / suki-bara° 4empty stomach,. So in addition to rendaku, at least two other common compounding markers exist in Japanese: gemination of the initial consonant of the second member, and, as we shall see in Chapter 7, accentuation. In spite of its largely random nature, some factors favourable to the application of rendaku can be identified, as shown in the next section.

4.2.1 Rendaku triggering factors The factors which condition the appearance of rendaku are of various kinds. First, there exist factors of a lexical nature. Rendaku can be regarded as a compounding marker, but it is also a manifestation of the degree of lexicalization of a given compound. All things being equal, the more lexicalized and frequent, the more a compound will be likely to contain a rendaku. The occurrence of rendaku also varies according to the lexical class, reflecting the degree of integration of a compound in the lexicon of Japanese. Whereas rendaku is extremely rare in loans of Western origin, and only occasional in Sino-Japanese words, it is very frequent in Yamato words. Lexemes of this latter stratum constitute the very privileged target for the application of rendaku when they occur as the final component of a compound. According to Rosen (2003), rendaku occurs in about 75% of Yamato Noun-Noun compounds that present the right phonological conditions to trigger it. However, and very interestingly, his survey makes it clear that cases of rendaku blocking actually cluster around particular lexical items rather than being randomly dispersed. This means that most nouns undergo rendaku in a regular manner, whereas a small number of nouns exhibit idiosyncratic behaviour with respect to rendaku: they either block it in a seemingly unpredictable and unconsistent manner in a number of compounds, or consistently block it under all conditions. Therefore there exists a clear unbalance as to the number of rendakutriggering nouns and -blocking nouns， to the benefit of the former. We will return to Rosen’s study in the next pages. Takayama T. (2005) claims that Sino-Japanese words that undergo rendaku are informal or colloquial expressions which can be categorized as 'vulgarized SinoJapanese \ They are lexemes of high frequency, which refer to concrete and familiar referents, like ‘photograph，ん 4a firm’， ‘sugar’.

116

(10)

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

in Sino-Japanese words + sh a sh irf /syasiN/ a o -ja sh in /zyasiN/ ‘blue’ + ‘photograph’ ‘blueprint’ R endaku

ao

kab u sh ik i + kaish a°

kabu shiki -g a ish a

‘share, stock’ + 4firm’ k u ro + satou ‘black’ + ‘sugar’

ku ro-zatou

‘a stock company’ ‘brown sugar’

The few cases of rendaku occurring in Western loans are found only in words which are no longer perceived as foreign, and have totally assimilated to the Yamato class. This is the case of ‘overcoat, raincoat’ and 厂Mfa 'playing card5, two very early loans from Portuguese (see Takayama T., 2005 for addi­ tional examples). Many speakers analyse these words as Yamato words, hence the application of rendaku when they occur as the second constituent of a compound as in a m a -g a p p a 4raincoat? and iro h a -g a ru ta 4iroha card (a game with the Japanese k a n a )\ The phonetic environment constitutes one of the other determining factors for the application of rendaku. R endaku occurs much more readily when the first element of the compound ends with the mora nasal /N/. This type of rendaku is traditionally referred to as shindaku literally 'new voicing,) in SinoJapanese words. (11)

R endaku after /N/ hon

+ tana°

h o n -dan a

‘book’ + ‘shelf ，

‘bookshelf’

+ h ira k i

h an -biraki°

‘half’ + ‘to open’

‘half-open’

shin + s u m 。

shin-zuru

‘trust’ + ‘to do’

‘to trust’

han

/ h an -biraki

Sino-Japanese words usually described as containing a rendaku often belong to this category. However, the examples cited here can be analysed d ifferen tly.

h o n -d a n a , h a n -b im k i° / h an -biraki, and sh in -zu ru (in w hich

the initial morphemes are Sino-Japanese and the final ones Yamato) the voicing occurring after the mora nasal might not pertain, strictly speaking, to a rendaku since this type of voicing can appear elsewhere than at the boundary between two autonomous morphemes. We might be dealing here with post-nasal voicing (see section 4.3), which, unlike rendaku , has no morpho­ logical function.

RENDAKU

117

It also appears that, other things being equal, the length of the compound or of one of its constituents might also determine the application of rendaku. Rosen (2003) and Irwin (2009) claim that long compounds prevent the blocking of rendaku under most conditions. Rosen (2003) shows that a set of words, which he labels as V^^^w-resisters5, can undergo voicing in a number of short—short noun compounds but always voice in long compounds (see Table 4.1 in the next section). In other words, rendaku-TQsistQrs never block rendaku when they occur in long compounds, but may voice when pre­ ceded by a short noun. (A compound is considered as long when its first component exceeds two moras.) So there exists a prosodic size threshold which, when exceeded by a compound, disables the blocking of rendaku by rendaku resisters. Compare for example the following examples with kusa 4grass\ a noun which, according to Rosen (2003), always undergoes rendaku when appearing after a long first member (12a), but sometimes resists it when the first member is short (12b). (12)

R e n d a k u and prosodic length (C2 is not a re n d a k u -b lo o k in g noun) a. C l= long —>rendaku is systematic hotaru-gusa 4firefly grass* enokoro-gusa 'foxtail grass5 hitsuji-gusa 'sheep grass5

b. C l= short ^ rendaku is non-systematic mizu-kusa° 'water grass* no-gusa 'wild grasses5 Ohno (2000) also reports an interesting experiment concerning the voicing of the morpheme h o n 'book9 in relation to the length of the first component. H o n undergoes re n d a k u only when the first member of the compound has three or more moras, as in b u n k o -b o n 'pocket book,, m a n g a - b o r f ‘manga book，， k a ru g a r u -b o n 'light book9 (the last item is a novel compound made up for the experiment). These examples can be compared to e -h o n 'picture book* or a k a -h o n ° 'cheap (pulp) fiction, in which no re n d a k u occurs. All of this shows that the size is definitely relevant for re n d a k u application. However, long compounds containing more than two constituents do not undergo re n d a k u in a systematic way. This is because re n d a k u also depends on the morpho-syntactic structure of the compound. According to Otsu (1980), R e n d a k u happens only when a potential re n d a k u segment is on a right branch at the lowest level of a constituent tree. So one finds minimal pairs like the following (accent omitted):

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

[i8

(13) Right-branch condition (Otsu, 1980) > nuri-hashi-bako a. nuri + hashi + hako (the second element does not undergo (nuri((hashi)(bako))) rendaku)

nuri hashi bako ‘lacquered’ + ‘chopstick’ + ‘box’ ‘chopstick box which is lacquered’ b. nuri + hashi + hako (((nuri)(bashi))(bako)

nuri

bashi

> nuri-bashi-bako

(both the second and third elements undergo rendaku)

bako

‘lacquered’ + ‘chopstick’ + ‘box’ ‘box for lacquered chopsticks， Observe the meaning difference between the two compounds in (13). The scope of n u ri 4lacquered5is different in the two examples. Semantic factors are also relevant. Rendaku appears systematically in redupli­ cated forms with a plural or iterative value as depicted in (14). (14)

hito° + hito°

hito-bito

‘person’ + 4person’

‘people，

kuni° + kuni°

kuni-guni

'country5+ 'country*

4various countries’

kaesu + kaesu

kaesu-gaesu

‘to repeat’ + ‘to repeat’ ‘repeatedly’ Note however that in reduplications with distributive value, variation occurs: rendaku may or may not apply: sore-zore (sore-zore) 4each, with rendaku, hitorihitori 'each person5, without rendaku (the form with rendaku hitori-bitori is also

attested). Finally, the grammatical class of words also plays a key role. Vance (2005) shows that 80% of the compounds involving adjectives, be they of the structure Adj + Verb = V (n a g a -b ik u 4be prolongedO, Adj + Verb = Noun (w a k a -g a e r i trejuvenation,), Adj + Adj = Adj (u s u -g u ra i° / u su -g u ra i tdim,) or Verb + Adj = Adj (u ta g a i-b u k a i Auspicious*) undergo re n d a k u , a percentage comparable to that found by Rosen (2003) for Yamato Noun + Noun = Noun compounds

119

RENDAKU

(see above). Contrastively, as we will see below, Verb + Verb = Verb compounds do not normally exhibit rendaku. These few remarks are unfortunately far from providing a correct account of all cases of occurrence of rendaku. As Yamaguchi Yoshinori (1988b) observes, it is easier to enumerate the conditions of rendaku blocking than to determine the rules which govern its application, as shown in section 4.2.2. 4 2 2 Rendaku-blocking factors

The conditions of rendaku blocking depend on various phonological, semantic, syntactic, and lexical parameters. As we have seen, the lexical origin of the morphemes has considerable influence on the chances for rendaku to apply. It occurs less often in Sino-Japanese words than in Yamato words, and never in recent Western loans (the exceptions only concern older loans, see above). Reduplicated mimetic words also never undergo rendaku: kira-kira 'glitteringly5, pera-pera° ‘eloquently’ (^kira-gira, ^pera-bera°6). Neither do numeral com­ pounds made up of a numeral and a specifier like huta-hako *two boxes * (^huta-bako) or go-hiki 'five animals1(^go-biki), but for a few exceptions such as /i/的 む ‘one star’， and some compounds starting with ‘three’ because of the presence of /N/ (such cases resort to post-nasal voicing, see below). A general principle blocks the application of rendaku. This principle is that of dissimilation. Rendaku does not occur when its appearance would be likely to involve the co-occurrence of two identical segments or of phonologically resem­ bling segments within the same domain. The most widely known aspect of this phenomenon is without question the so-called Lyman5s law. Lyman^ law stipu­ lates that rendaku never occurs when the second component of the compound already contains a voiced obstruent. It is important to note that rendaku is not blocked when the second component contains a sonorant (a nasal or the liquid r). Consider the following examples: (15) karni + tana° ‘god’ + ‘shelf’ but

kami-dana°

*kami-tana°

‘a domestic altar’

kami + kaze°

kami-kaze

‘god’ + ‘wind’

‘divine wind’

toki + toki

toki-doki 丨toki-^pki°

‘moment’ + ‘moment’

‘sometimes’

^kami-gaze hoki-toki I hoki-toki0

6 The exceptions which may come to mind are in fact non-ideophonic in origin, like kori-g 〇ri, korigori° beaming at one's cost', from koriru 4to learn by experience\ taka-daka 'very high', from takai ‘high’. Such words also differ from true mimetics by the accent pattern.

120

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

but tabi + tabi

tabi-tabi。

‘time’ + ‘time’

4often?

mizu° + kuruma0

mizu-guruma

‘water’ + 4wheel’ but

‘water wheel’

mizu° + kagami

mizu-kagami

‘water’ + ‘mirror’

‘reflection in water’

*tabi-dabi° ^mizu-kuruma

^mizu-gagami

The non-application of rendaku in kamikaze, tabi-tabi°, and mizu-kagami can actually be regarded as pertaining to the already discussed general law of Yamato roots, which forbids the co-occurrence of two voiced obstruents within the same morpheme (see section 4.1.1). Observe that the presence of a voiced obstruent in the first component, for example in mizu°, is irrelevant with regard to Lyman5s law. However, some exceptions to this principle have been reported, especially in personal names ending with the morpheme ta ffl 'rice field' (Kubozono, 2003 based on Sugito, 1965). Rendaku of ta fails to apply when it is immediately preceded in the first component by a voiced obstruent or by /y/. We thus have Kubo-ta, Naga-ta°, Mizu-ta, etc. but Yama-da°, Kan-da°, Yasu-da°, etc. (all are personal names). The non-application of rendaku in cases where the second component already contains a voiced obstruent is often described as an absolute principle, but Vance (1987) mentions a few exceptions. The least disputable examples are compounds containing the noun hashigo0 ladder5, for example nawa + hashigo0 > nawabashigo 4rope ladder5, in which the rendaku of h occurs, in spite of the presence of g in hashigo0. But interestingly enough, the two voiced obstruents in -hashigo are not contiguous, and moreover, hashigo0 is a lexeme longer than two moras, and, as already mentioned, prosodic length has been shown to be a definite rendaku-triggQnng factor. Other manifestations of the dissimilation principle, which Lyman’s law can be viewed as a strong example of, are a little less obvious but nevertheless rather special. They appear in examples such as those presented in (16)， taken from Sat6 H.(1989). Here, the absence of rendaku seems to be motivated by a dissimilatory principle, in order to avoid repetition of the same phonological element, which can be either a mora or a segment. (16)

a. Compounds containing the morpheme h i 4fire5 tobi° + h i tobi-hi° ^tobi-bi° ‘jump’ + ‘fire， ‘leaping flames’ Compare with kitsune。+ h i

kitsune-bi

^kitsune-hi

121

RENDAKU

‘fox， + ‘fire，

‘a fox (elf) fire’

n okori + h i

n o k o ri-b i

ネn okori-hi

‘remainder’ + ‘fire’ ‘embers， m o ra l0 + h i m orai-bi° (m orai-bi, m orai-bi) ネm orai-hi ‘receiving’ + ‘fire’ ‘fire caught from a neighbouring house’ b. Compounds containing the morpheme tsu keru 'to puf kizu° + tsu keru k izu -tsu k er u ^kizu-zukeru ‘a wound’ + ‘to put’ ‘to hurt’ Compare with a to

+ tsukeru

a to -zu k eru

‘a trace’ + ‘to put’

‘to leave a trace’

n a。 + tsukeru

na-zu keru

‘name’ + ‘to put’

‘to name5

+ tsukeru

ich i-zu keru

ich i

‘position’ + ‘to put’

^ato-tsu keru ^na-tsukeru

ネic h i-tsu k e m

‘to locate’

This series of examples shows that compounds of the shape X + h i and X + tsukeru undergo rendaku regularly, except tobi-h i° and kizu -tsu keru , the two forms which already contain the moras b i and zu in their first component. This seems to be a robust tendency, and I could find only one counter example, tabi-bito° ttraveller, (ta b i + h ito°) with respect to this rule in the list of about 800 rendaku-coni?i\m ng compounds provided by Ito and Mester (2003, appendix). However, since voiced obstruents are statistically much less frequent in the overall Japanese lexicon, as the statistics shown at the end of Chapter 3 indicate, additional research based on a thorough statistical analysis is called for in order to confirm the reality of this phenomenon. Sato H .(1989, quoting Kindaichi 1976) also mentions the lexemes him e ‘princess’ and ‘string’， which never undergo ぴ 《ぬん仏 This could also be interpreted as an effect of the dissimilation principle, since the voicing of h would produce the components *bim e, *bim o, with two labial consonants. However, a number of other lexemes such as tsu ch i 'soil5, sh io 'tide5, kem u ri0 'smoke5, taka° shawK , are known to resist rendaku even though voicing of their initial segment would not cause the repetition of similar segments or features.7 Such words actually belong to the class of nouns that Rosen (2003) labels as 'rendaku immune\ Rosen examines exceptions to rendaku voicing that are independent of Lyman's law and which are generally ignored or treated as random and

7 It would be interesting to check whether there is a correlation between the accent pattern of these words and the fact that they resist rendaku, given the fact that none of the examples cited here is accented on the initial.

122

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

unsystematic by the relevant literature. He argues that although re n d a k u appears completely unpredictable seen from the perspective of individual nouns, it exhibits a strong degree of patterning on a global scale. On the basis of a thorough corpus examination of Noun + Noun compounds, he identifies three types of nouns with respect to re n d a k u blocking: (a) "Rendaku-immxxnQ nouns5, which never voice under any circumstances (see also Martin,1987, Vance，1987)， such as たぬ0 ‘north’，/kwf。 ‘edge’， 'below5, kasu 'dregs*, hima° *leisure \ kemuri0 4smoke5, kase 'shackles*, himo° 'string5, katachi0 4shape*, tsuchi 4earth*, hime 'princess*, kamachi0 tframework,, hama 4beach\ tsuya° 4gloss\ (b) 'R e n d a k u resisters' which robustly resist voicing but o n ly in short-short compounds (short-short compounds are compounds in which neither mem­ ber exceeds two moras). (c) The elsewhere case of all other nouns, which undergo re n d a k u voicing in most compounds. The difference between rendaku-immunQ nouns and rendaku resisters thus lies in the fact that rendaku-immunt nouns never undergo voicing, even in long compounds, whereas rendaku resisters always voice in long compounds, even though they do not always do so in short ones (see the examples with kusa 4grass* cited in (12)). Rosen5s study shows that cases of r e n d a k u blocking among r e n d a k u resis­ ters actually cluster around particular lexical items rather than being randomly dispersed. That is, about half of the cases of r e n d a k u blocking in short-short compounds occur among just eight nouns, which are: k u s a 'grass*, h a r a ‘field’，た ‘habit’，た ‘skin’，似 /^’0 ‘tip’， ‘tree’，たゲ ‘child’，な 4hand’.8 These findings are summarized in table 4.1. We will return to Rosen’s study, which consitutes an important recent contribution to r e n d a k u , in section 4.2.4 below. It is sometimes said that Verb + Verb compounds are another type of com­ pound in which re n d a k u is supposed to occur less readily. Okumura (1980) gives the pairs s e m e -to r u 4to take by assault9 (accent unknown) with no re n d a k u , and s e m e -d o r i 'being forced to add extra stones to remove a captured group from the board (a term of the go jargon) \ its nominal form, which exhibits ren d a k u . However, according to Vance (2005), neither the verbal nor the nominal variant undergoes re n d a k u in about 90% of the compounds belonging to this type. To

8 A number of other nouns never voice in short-short compounds, for instance kata 'shoulder' or shimo ^rost', but since each of them occurs only in at most three compounds, all of them short-short, it is difficult to tell if they are behaving as rendaku-immune nouns or rendaku-resister nouns.

123

RENDAKU

4.1. Summary of blocking patterns among Yamato noun-noun compounds (Table 5 in Rosen 2003) Table

Classification of second conjunct /?ど た w-immime (never undergoes rendaku voicing) ぬん“-resistant (usually blocks voicing in short compounds but never in long compounds) Unknown type (never undergoes rendaku but occurs in few compounds; likely either rendakuresistant or rendakuimmune) Non-resistant (usually voices in compounds)

N° of cases of Total n° of Total n° of voicing in short long short compounds compounds compounds

N° of cases of voicing in long compounds

49

0 (0%)

14

0 (0%)

119

36 (30%)

13

13 (100%)

21

0 (0%)

0

0 (0%)

580

522 (90%)

196

196 (100%)

give just one example, mi-toosu° / mi-toosu 'foresee5 and mi-toosi° prospect5, both occur with no rendaku^ Another robust constraint of a morpho-syntactic nature is at work. Rendaku tends to occur more easily when the initial component (a noun) is an instrument, or place complement, than when it is the object complement of the final compo­ nent. Compare for instance the following pairs (Okumura, 1980): (17) e + kaki

e-kaki

4a painter (= picture drawing)’ (Object)

‘picture’ + ‘writing’ vs. hude° + kaki

hude-gaki°

‘brush’ + ‘writing’

‘writing with a brush’

yane + huki°

yane-huki (yane-huki°)

'roof + 4covering ” vs. wara + huki° ‘straw’ + ‘covering’

‘roof covering’ wara-buki°

(Instrument) (Object)

(Instrument)

‘thatching with straw’

9 Some rare exceptions exist. Vance cites the verb kaeri-zaku 4bloom again' (accent unknown), from kaeru 4to return' and saku° *to bloom,.

124

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

Here, it is tempting to resort to the etymological hypothesis already mentioned in 4.2, which analyses rendaku as the remnant of an enclitic particle containing a voice feature, such as de (Instumental) or ni (Locative). This factor seems to be still productive in Japanese. For instance, in the novel N eko no kyaku (2001:90-91),10 by the well-known poet Hiraide Takashi, the narrator makes a linguistically interesting comment regarding the meaning dif­ ference between two possible readings of the compound written as (which occurs as the title of a lithograph in the novel and combines 稲 妻 か ‘lightning’ and 捕 切 ， ，• ‘catching’）. Should it be 肢 Won’， without rendaku, or inazuma-dori, with rendaku ? He comments that inazuma-tori should be interpreted as inazuma w o torn, 4to catch lightning* (inazuma = Object), whereas inazuma-dori would mean 4to catch (something) like lightning, or with a movement resembling that of lightning, (inazuma de_ toru, inazuma = Manner). The semantico-syntactic relationship between the two morphemes of the compound is relevant in another way. Rendaku generally appears when the first element syntactically depends on the second. On the other hand, when no hierarchy exists between the two components, as is typically the case in dvandva compounds (coordinative compounds), as well as in reduplicated mimetics, rendaku never occurs. Compare the already cited pairs of compounds ya m a kawa 'mountains (and) rivers5, mdyama-gawa° 4river of the mountain,, or tsu yu shimo 'dew (and) frost?and tsuyu-jimo° *frost formed by the dew\n 4.2.3 Correlations between rendaku and accent

There exist strong and curious correlations between voicing and accent. For instance, as just mentioned, it is noteworthy that dvandva compounds neither undergo rendaku nor receive an accent following the rules of compound accen­ tuation, as we shall see in Chapter 7. Long compounds, containing more than two constituents and which possess two accent kernels do not undergo rendaku either (Ito and Mester, 2003). For Kubozono (2005), the correct generalization is that 'phonological unification is blocked between two constituents A and B, if B does not c-command A \ phonological unification Deing materialized by rendaku and/ or attribution of a compound accent pattern. Rosen (2003) also observes a parallel between the predictability of accent patterns and the predictability of rendaku appearance with respect to prosodic

10 Hiraide Takashi, 2 00\%Neko no kyaku (The Guest Cat). Reference is to the paperback edition by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in 2009• 11 Noteworthy enough, dvandva compounds do not follow the general compound accent rule either (see section 7.3.4), so it might be expected that identical semantic constraints account for the resistance to compound accent and to rendaku, as observed by Takeuchi (1999) based on Kubozono (1987).

RENDAKU

125

length in compound words. As he states， ‘when a compound has at least one constituent that exceeds two moras, both its pitch accent and the voicing of the rendaku-targQtQd obstruent are predictable from the input forms\ So there is a strong correlation between prosodic size and irregularity regarding accentuation and rendaku application. In some cases, one observes that the appearance of rendaku might correlate with an atonic accent pattern because compounds which fail to undergo rendaku are often atonic. The series of compounds with tori° ‘bird， offers interesting examples: ko-tori° 4little bird5, mizu-tori° Vaterfowr, niwa-tori° 'domestic fowl5, yaki-tori° 'grilled chicken5 with no rendaku are all atonic, whereas chidori 'plover5, miyako-dori 'oyster bird5, yam a-dori 4mountain bird5, watari-dori 'migrating bird*, all undergo rendaku and are also tonic (this series of examples comes from Takeuchi, 1999:49). Another interesting comparison can be seen in the following pairs of examples, where rendaku-undtrgoing compounds also happen to be atonic: (18) /z/to-纪

一 手

‘one hand’ vs. /z/fo少 。人 手 4another’s hand (lit. human hand)’

(hito- 'one5+ te 4hand?vs. hito° person5+ te 'hand5) hito-koe — ^ 'one voice5vs. hito-goe° 'human voice' ‘one’ +

た 似 ‘voice’

vs. /z/如。 ‘person’ +

た 似 ‘voice ’ ）

These correspondences between accent and rendaku are symptomatic of the particular status of voicing in Japanese. In many respects, voicing can be com­ pared to a supra-segmental feature such as tone or accent, a point to which we return in the last section of this chapter. 4.2.4 Some theoretical proposals concerning rendaku

For Komatsu (1981), Yamaguchi Yoshinori (1988b), and many other linguists, the main function of rendaku is that of a compounding marker. Since virtually no root of the Yamato lexicon starts with a voiced obstruent, the presence of voicing on the normally voiceless initial consonant of the second component indicates that this consonant is not initial and, thereby, that the word is no longer indepen­ dent. A formal interpretation of this is provided by Ito and Mester (1986) who posit that rendaku consists of a morphological operation involving the insertion of a [+voice] autosegment at compound juncture. This autosegment is associated to an unsyllabified segmental position. Ito and Mester (2003:83) reformulate this by saying that rendaku is a feature-sized morpheme, expressed as and con­ sisting of the specification [+voiced]. ^ acts as a prefix to the second member in word compounds, forming a constituent with it. Rosen (2003) proposes that the capacity for a given noun to undergo rendaku is encoded in its underlying representation. Recall, as explained before, that Rosen

126

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

distinguishes three types of nouns: rendaku-immunt nouns, rendaku resisters, and rendaku undergoers. He proposes that the three types be formally specified as follows: rendaku-immunQ nouns such as kita° 4north, have a [—voice] feature that is linked to the root node of the initial obstruent, rendaku resisters such as kusa 'grass? have a floating [—voice] feature, and non resisters such as kuchi° ‘mouth’ have an initial obstruent that is underspecified for voicing, as follows (the capital K represents a velar stop minus its voicing feature). (19) a. Kita ‘north’ b. Kusa ‘grass’ c. Kuchi ‘mouth’

I [-voice]

、

[-voice]

Following Ito and Mester (1986), Rosen assumes that rendaku voicing occurs because of a junctural morpheme whose underlying form is a floating [+voice] feature. The basic idea is that in non-resisting nouns, which have no relevant underlying voicing feature, the [+voice] feature of the junctural morpheme links to the initial obstruent of the second conjunct in the output. The linked [—voice] feature of rendaku-immunQ nouns persists in all compounds, whereas the floating [—voice] feature of rendaku resisters persists only in short-short compounds, for a reason which has to do with the length of the compound. As pointed out above (section 4.2.2), a crucial aspect of Rosen5s study and analysis rests on the empirical observation that rendaku-rtsisting nouns block rendaku only in short-short compounds. So, in addition to the specification of the [voice] feature which distinguishes rendaku-\mm\xnt nouns and rendaku resisters, Rosen claims that one has to further take into account the prosodic difference between the two types of compounds, and integrate this into the analysis through a constraintbased grammar. Taking for granted that the canonical Japanese feet are bimoraic (see Chapter 6), Rosen follows Kubozono (1999a) in considering that every foot is entirely contained within the same morpheme, so that two adjacent monomoraic feet will not form a single bimoraic foot: each foot will be parsed as a separate degenerate foot. Adopting the commonly accepted analysis that a prosodic word must maximally consist of two feet in Japanese, it follows that long compounds consist of a separate prosodic word for each constituent but that short compounds do not. This is supposedly what explains that rendaku blocking occurs only in short compounds. For Rosen, 4the relevant generalisation is that rendaku voicing is freely permitted to occur in a syllable that is at the left edge of a prosodic word\ In short compounds, the initial obstruent of the second conjunct is not at the left edge of a prosodic word, whereas it is in long compounds. Rosen assumes that the marked [+voice] feature is permitted more freely in the prosodically strong position that occurs at the left edge of the second conjunct of a long

RENDAKU

127

compound, i.e. the beginning of a different prosodic word, following the assump­ tion of Positional Markedness as developed by Zoll (1998), Smith (2002), etc. In short, the beginning of the second conjunct coincides with the beginning of a new prosodic word in long compounds but it does not in short-short compounds. In Rosen’s approach, the lexical prespecification of a [—voice] feature thus interacts with prosodic length to cause blocking of rendaku voicing specifically in short-short compounds but not in long compounds. Rosen also provides a challenging OT analysis of how different constraints interact in order to select the right candidates (with or without rendaku ). Since his treatment is extremely technical, and cannot easily be summarized, interested readers are invited to refer directly to the paper itself. To give a flavour of an OT analysis of rendaku , we will offer here a summary of Ito and Mester (2003). Contrary to RosenJs, it does not rely on a difference in specification between nouns, and thus may appear to be ‘mechanically’ simpler. The overall process of rendaku appearance is accounted for by the action of four main constraints. (20) Constraints involved in rendaku (Ito and Mester, 2003:96) No-D2m No two voiced obstruents per morpheme domain Realize-M Every morpheme in the input has a nonnull phonological exponent in the output (Kurisu, 2001) Ident N o change in feature specification No-D No voiced obstruents These four constraints are ordered according to the following hierarchy: (21) Constraint hierarchy in rendaku (Ito and Mester, 2003) No-D2m» Realize-M » Ident » No-D Let us see how the analysis works for n a g a -so d e° /naga + ^ + sode/ 4longsleeve,, in (22) which does not undergo rendaku because of the application of Lyman^ law, and n atsu -zora° /natu + ^ + sora/ Summer sky\ in (23) which does stands for the rendaku morpheme). (22)

n a g a -so d e

/naga + 兄 + sode/ naga zode ^ naga sode

No-D、

Realize-M

*! *

Ident

No-D

*

氺氺氺 氺氺

128

THE PHONOLOGY OF CONSONANT VOICING

(23) natsu-zora /natu + 兄 + sora/ ぼ

No-D2m Realize-M

Ident 氺

natsu zora

No-D *

*!

natsu sora

The presentation above is only intended to provide an overview of how the analysis by Ito and Mester (2003) works. A number of additional constraints (which can be considered as secondary as far as the core phenomenon of rendaku is concerned), as well as considerations of a more general relevance with respect to theoretical research in Optimality Theory, are also involved. In their account, compounds that do not undergo rendaku are treated as mere exceptions, and the relevance of prosodic length to the likeliness of rendaku occurring is not considered. 4.2.5 Concluding remarks on rendaku Rendaku is sometimes presented as a unitary phenomenon, but it is not. As we have seen throughout the preceding pages, rendaku is a process located at the

intersection of several fields of grammar—phonology (both segmental and pro­ sodic), morphology, syntax, semantics, and so on—where various forces come into conflict. The difficulty one has in trying to get a full picture of rendaku precisely comes from the fact that rendaku application or non-application depends on factors of many kinds, which concern almost all dimensions of linguistic analysis, and hence exceptions can always be found. What we need now are more corpus investigations with a wider coverage, on the model of those conducted by Rosen (2003), Irwin (2009), or Vance (2005), but which would target lexemes belonging to all word categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives), of both Yamato and Sino-Japanese origin. Ideally, such a database would also contain prosodic information (accent location as well as length), as well as, needless to say, semantic, morphological, and syntactic parameters. Psycholinguistic studies are also likely to provide new insights into rendaku, particularly concerning the productivity of rendaku in the modem language, not forgetting the manner in which it is acquired by Japanese children.

4 .3

P O S T -N A S A L V O IC IN G

Post-nasal voicing refers to the phenomenon whereby a voiceless consonant is replaced by its voiced counterpart after the mora nasal /N/ in Yamato and

POST-NASAL VOICING

129

Sino-Japanese words. Voicing of the nasal /N/ spreads to the following consonant. Typical examples are kan ^ick5+ sha 'person5> kanja° 4a patient,, or the well-known cases of the verbal suffixes -te and -ta, which become -de and -da after a verbal base ending with /N/:的/2-み 0 ‘to fly and … ’，如 2-ぬ 。‘flew’ from tobu° 4to fly5.12In all the examples just cited, none of the morphemes can occur in isolation. Note that mora nasals do not always cause voicing of a following voiceless consonant, especially in reduplicated mimetics (kankarf / ^kangarf ‘be in rage’）. Post-nasal voicing is often said to apply productively in Yamato words, in an erratic manner in Sino-Japanese words, and never in Western words, but not a few exceptions can be found in the Yamato stratum. For instance, we have chanto0 iproperly,, yutanpo 4hot water bottle,, tanpopo 4dandelion\ chinko 'small person5 or 如 引 く 音 )， noted /R/ in phonological transcriptions: h o u /hoR/ 'direction\ aa° /aR/ 'like that\ k u u k i /kuRki/ 4air\ A number of Japanese structuralist phonologists only recognize /N/ and /Q/ as ‘special moras’， and exclude /R/ from the set.1 Others (for example J6o，1977) sometimes consider that a fourth element should be added to the list: the moraic palatal vowel /, transcribed as /J/ phonologically. /J/ appears for instance in kai /kaJ/ ^heir, oyoida /oyoJda/ 'swam5. This element is also the one which occurs after the vowel /e/ when it is lengthened, as in sensei /senseJ/ tprofessor,. I assume that there is no need to distinguish /J/ from the moraic vowel /i/, since there is no minimal pair such as /kai/ and /kaJ/. Accordingly the above-mentioned examples will be transcribed as k a i /kai/, oyoida /oyoida/, and sensei /seNsei/ or /seNseR/ in this book (see also section 2.7.1, as well as Chapter 6, on this issue).

1 For instance, Hattori Shiro (1960, and other papers) does not need the unit /R/ because he posits a zero consonant /V which enables him to distinguish satooya0 Foster parent' from satouya 4sugar seller5, which he transcribes respectively as sato'oya and satooya. In the transcription adopted in this book, these two forms are transcribed as sato-oya° /satooya/ and satou-ya /satoRya/. The former has two full o fs which follow each other, the latter has a long o (see section 2.7.3 for a discussion on the representational difference between the two entities).

/ n / (THE MORA NASAL)

133

In this work, I shall follow the Japanese approach (for instance Hamada, 1949) in considering that /N/, /Q/, and /R/ are segments different in nature from vowels and consonants. Special segments are worth one prosodic unit (mora, haku) in the same way as CV sequences. The trimoraic forms san po° /saNpo/ *a walk*, kitte° /fciQte/ 'stamp' and ku uki /kuRki/4air*, which each contain one special segment, are thus perceived as having the same prosodic length (three moras) as the word sakura° ‘cherry tree’. The phonological status of /N/, /Q/, and /R/ constitutes without doubt one of the most intricate issues of Japanese phonology. In particular, it has to be acknowledged that it is the very existence of these elements which has led some scholars to posit a distinction between light and heavy syllables in certain recent approaches, or between normal, independent rhythmic units (jiritsu haku 自 立 拍 ）and special rhythmic units (如たwAw 心たw 特 殊 拍 ）in traditional approaches. Since the issue of the mora and syllable in Japanese phonology will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, in close connection with the status of special segments, the present chapter will keep to a general presentation of /N/, /Q/, and /R/’s phenomenology， without entering too deeply into the problem of their phonological nature and structure. After having presented each of the three special segments from the point of view of their phonetic and phonological characteristics (sections 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3), we will have a look at their origin (section 5.4.), before considering their common properties (section 5.5). We shall finally provide some statistical data concerning their frequency (section 5.6).

5 .1 / N / ( T H E M O R A N A S A L )

/N/, the mora nasal, is a generic nasal contoid, with no definite place of articula­ tion. By default, in slow speech and before a pause, /N/ is a uvular realized with no dorsal occlusion and transcribed as [ n ] (la). Before oral or nasal labial stops /p/, /b/, /m/, it is realized as [m](lb), before the alveolars /t/, /d/, /n/, as [n](lc), and before the velars /k/ and /g/, as [q](Id). Before the fricatives /h/, /s/, and /z/, be they palatalized or not, phoneticians disagree about its place of articulation: /N/ is either realized as the nasalized version of the preceding vowel (Saito, 1997, 2003), as a fricative nasal, or even a nasalized high vowel [ui] or [1](Imada, 1981; Hashimoto Sh., 1950) (le). Before the semi-consonants /w/ and /y/ and before vowels, the special segment /N/ is phonetically a nasal vowel whose quality is said to be that of the preceding vowel (If). According to Akamatsu (1997:58ff.) it is actually impossible to determine the exact quality of /N/ before vowels, semi­ consonants, and fricatives. In addition, before the liquid /r/, things are quite

134

SPECIAL SEGMENTS

fuzzy. It would seem that /N/ is uttered as some kind of [li], as the nasalized version of the preceding vowel, or as a nasal which would be at the same time alveolar and uvular (lg). Moreover, the presence of /N/ generally involves nasalization of the preceding vowel (not noted in the examples below). To conclude, the descriptions of phoneticians diverge considerably as to the exact articulatory nature of /N/. ( 1 ) Phonetic realization of /N/ a. Before a pause hon

[■h〇N] /hoN/ ‘book’ b. Before [p], [b], [m] kinpatsu。

[kimpatsui] /kiNpatu/ ‘blond’ binbou

/biNboR/ ‘poor’

['bimbo:] genmai

/geNmai/

['gemmai]

‘whole rice

c. Before [t], [d], [n] honten 。

[honteN]

/hoNteN/

4main shop*

/toNda/

‘flew’

tonda。

[tonda] sannerf

[sanneN] /saNneN/ 4three years* d. Before [k], [g], [rj] kankei。

[karjke:]

/kaNkei/, /kaNkeR/

‘relation’

kangae

[karj'gae], [karj'gae] /kaNgae/, /kaNgae/ ‘thought (noun)’ e. Before /h/, /s/, /z/ sanhujinka0

[saui(j)iu^igka], [saa(()Ui?,ir)ka] /saNhuziNka/ ‘gynaecology’ sensei

[seelse:],[seiu'se:], [sez'se:]

/seNsei/

‘professor，

/kaNzi/

‘Chinese character’

kanji。

[kaa?.i], [kaui?.i], [ka^?.i]

/ q / (g e m i n a t i o n )

135

f. Before /w/，/y/， and before a vowel kanw a°

[kaaiqa]

/kaNwa/

‘Sino-Japanese’

se n fyou °

[seejo:]

/seNyoR/ Exclusive use*

o n ’in°

[oiiN], [oi?iN]

/oNiN/

4phonology，

n an ’ou 。

[naao:], [naa?o:] /naNoR/

‘Southern Europe’

g. Before /r/ enryo°

['euiqo], ['eeQo], ['eyrjo] /eNryo/ 'reserve, discretion, Another notable fact about /N/ is that it can never be linked to an onset position before a vowel. It can never be resyllabified either. Thus the word o n 'in 0 /oNiN/ ‘phonology’ is realized as [oT.iN] or [oT.?iN] but never as *[o.niN]，*[on.niN] or *[o.NiN].2*This impossibility of resyllabifying /N/ and its significance for the phonological analysis of the moraic segments will be discussed again in the next chapter (section 6.2.3). Finally， it is noteworthy to observe that the graphemes ん and ン for the nasal mora /N/ in the Japanese kana syllabaries are the only letters whose origin is totally unknown, contrary to all other kan a symbols.

5.2 /Q/(GEMINATION) /Q/ represents a generic moraic oral obstruent with no specific place of articula­ tion. It occurs only before another consonant, except in a few special cases, in particular that or interjections, in which /Q/ can be word-final. However, its function in that case is expressive and non-distinctive. The phonetic realization of /Q/ depends on that of the following consonant. /Q/ inherits the totality of its articulatory features from the following obstruent. It is realized as unreleased when it corresponds to a stop, so we have [p-1] before /p/, [b"1] before /b/, [tn] before /t/, and so forth. Note that /Q/ is always noted by means of the small kana tsu (^ > , y ) before an obstruent in the Japanese writing system, whatever its effective phonetic realization.

2 In Pre-modem Japanese, the process known as renjd 4liaison') sometimes occurs in this type of context. Some vestiges of this remain in the modem language, but they are totally lexicalized, like tennou kemperor, from ten /teN/ 'heaven' and ou /oR/ ^king1, rather than ten'ou as one would expect. See Vance (1987:164ff.) for a presentation of this phenomenon.

136

SPECIAL SEGMENTS

Consonants likely to undergo gemination, that is, likely to be preceded by /Q/ in Yamato (including mimetics) and in Sino-Japanese are normally limited to the voiceless obstruents /p, t, k, s/ and their palatalized counterparts (2a). The voiced geminates (bb, d d , zz, g g ) appear only in very recent loanwords, or under particular conditions (see Chapter 4). When they exist, they tend to undergo devoicing (2b) especially if the word already contains another voiced obstruent (Kawahara, 2006), as is the case in the examples provided below. The geminate versions of /r/ and /h/ are almost non-existent, except in some marginal examples such as recent borrowings or mimetic words (2c); (on geminate /h/, see also section 3.7, as well as footnote 3, Chapter 3). The glides /w/ and /y/ are never geminated. Finally, recall that in Yamato (including mimetics) and Sino-Japanese words the geminate counterpart of the fricative /h/ is normally [pp] (see section 3.7). Nasal geminates do exist, but they are interpreted as /N/ + nasal consonant rather than as /Q/ + nasal consonant. The kana spelling accordingly is m in n a 4air み ん な /miNna/ rather than *み つ な /miQna/. (2) Realizations of /Q/ a. Before a voiceless obstruent [kap'pa] /kaQpa/ kappa0 /moQto/ [丨mofto] m o tto [kissateN] /kiQsateN/ k issa ten 。 /haQsya/ h assh a 。 [happa] /maQtya/ m a tch a 。 [maft^a] /seQkeN/ sekken 。 [sek’keN]

(river imp)J ‘more， *coffee shop’ ‘departure， ‘green matcha tea’ ‘soap， 'k a p p a

b. Before a voiced obstruent bag g u [,bag1gui] /baQgu/ {bag} gu zzu ['guizzui] /guQzu/ {goods} c. Before /h/ and /r/ (marginal cases) ju h h a ri [_るuihhari] bah h a ['bahha], ['ba^xa] uhh uh hu (to) [uic|)(j)iu中1中ui] ぬ ra。[bairabara]，[ballabala]

/zyuQhari/ ‘ten stitches’ /baQha/ {Bach} /uhhuhhu/ (onomatopoeia for laugh) /baQrabara/4scatteringly’

Before a pause, /Q/ is realized as a glottal stop [?]. It almost exclusively appears at the end of interjections (a r e t〇[are?] /areQ/, an expression of surprise), at the end of onomatopoeia and ideophones {bata! [bata?] /bataQ/ 'bang'), and at the end of adjectives referring to sensations or feelings used in an interjective manner, in replacement of the -i ending (for instance a tsu [a'tsui?] 4it?s hot!5, from shinda0 /siNda/ ‘died’ (Yamato) tori-ta > totta /toQta/ ‘took’ (Yamato) This process is known as 0/2/7//2 (音 便 ‘sound change’） only when it applies to Yamato words.

SPECIAL SEGMENTS

138

kam ibe

> koube

kehu

> k yo u

gakuki

> gakki°

/koRbe/ 4Kobe? (Yamato) /kyoR/ ‘today， (Yamato) /gaQki/ ‘musical instrument’ (Sino-Japanese)

In contemporary colloquial Japanese, /N/ and /Q/ are sometimes the result of the lenition of a nW or rV sequence, for instance a ru ite iru no > a ru ite in no 4are you walking?or sou° suru° to > sou° su tto doing this*. (5) Special segments marking expressive reinforcement (by addition of a rhyth­ mic position) k o g a ri > k o n g a ri /koNgari/ ‘well well roasted’ (mimetic) on aji 。 > o n n a ji 。 /〇どnazi/ ‘quite identical’ (Yamato) to tem o 。 > to tte m o 。 /toQtemo/ tveeeery, (Yamato) zu tto 。 > zw ^tto 。 /zuRQto/ ‘contiimnuously’ (mimetic) (6) Special segments resulting from the adaptation of foreign sounds Old Chinese *tong > jp. tou /toR/ ‘East’ Old Chinese *sam > jp. san° /saN/ ‘three’ Old Chinese *niet_ > jp. (go reading) nichi, nit_-/mt\/, /niQ/ 4sun* English pet > jp. petto /peQto/ ‘pet’ French Bordeaux > jp. borudou /borudoR/ ‘Bordeaux’ In Sino-Japanese words, /Q/ is the reflex of one of the three Old Chinese syllable-final implosives p , t, and k (known as ru sheng in Chinese, nissho in Japanese, lit. ‘entering tone’).

5 .5

P R O P E R T IE S OF S P E C IA L S E G M E N T S

Special segments share a number of properties, that distinguish them from 'regular， consonants and vowels. First, they lack phonological autonomy. For instance, they can never appear in isolation or at the beginning of a word.4 Second, they are moraic (see Chapter 6 for examples and discussion). Thirdly, they are, in theory, unaccentable. This principle, which we shall call the NADM principle (Non-Accentuation of Deficient Moras), will be discussed in more detail in sections 6.2.4, 6.3.2, and 7.1.4. Let us merely observe that in cases where the accent should fall on a special segment, it shifts to the preceding mora.

4 The only exception in Standard Modem Japanese is the interjection un *uh huh% realized as [?iu:]. One can also mention the marginal, obsolete realizations [mme] for ume° 'plum ', and other words beginning with u + nasal (see section 3.8).

PROPERTIES OF SPECIAL SEGMENTS

139

Thus, according to the traditional account in Japanese phonology in compound words of the type N + e k i 4N station\ or N + k a i 4club of N \ the accent normally falls on the last mora of the first component, except if it ends in /N/, /Q/, or /R/, in which case the accent moves to the penultimate mora, as shown in (7): (7)

+ eki

n a g o y a -e k i

nagoya + kai

n a g o y a -k a i

nagoya

'Nagoya station’ ‘Nagoya club’

but to u k y o u 。 + e k i

to u k y o u -e k i

^ to u k y o u -e k i

+ eki to u k y o u 0 + k a i ron don + k a i

r o n d o n -e k i

ネ

r o n d o n -e k i

to u k y o u -k a i

ネ

to u k y o u -k a i

r o n d o n -k a i

* ro n d o n -k a i

ron don

Tokyo station? 'London station' Tokyo club* ‘London club’

The same phenomenon occurs in verbs to which the -ta (perfect) auxiliary has been addea. fhe suffixation of -ta normally causes the accent to strike the antepenultimate mora in tonic verbs. However, if the antepenultimate consists of a special segment, the accent moves one mora leftward, striking the preantepenultimate mora: (8)

/tabe/ + /ta/ /atume/ + /ta/ but /roNzi/ + /ta/ /moRsi/ + /ta/

ta b e ta a ts u m e ta

r o n jita m o u s h ita

/tabeta/ /atumeta/

4ate5 ‘gathered’

/roNzita / ^ ro n jita /moRsita/ ^ m o u sh ita

'argued* ‘said (humbly)’

Let us consider another instance of this phenomenon. In foreign loans, the default accent normally falls on the antepenultimate mora: o p e r a /opera/ {opera}, s a n d o itc h i /saNdoiQti/ {sandwich}, m a ik u ro h o n /maJkurohoN/ {microphone}, sa n h u ra n s h isu k o /saNhuraNsisuko/ {San Francisco). However, if the antepenul­ timate mora is /N/, /Q/, or /R/ (and sometimes /i/), the accent shifts to the preantepenultimate mora: d is u k a s s h o n /disukaQsyoN/ ^ d isu k a ssh o n {discussion}, re p o u ta a /repoRtaR/ ^ r e p o u ta a {reporter} (see Chapter 6 for additional exam­ ples and discussion of this process). Exceptions to this principle are rare, but they do exist. They pose a challenge to syllable-based analyses of Japanese, as we shall see in the next chapter. These exceptions occur in case several special segments follow one another: for instance, in the words o b a a s a n k k o /obaRsaNQko/ 4child cherished by his/her grandmother1or c h e e n -te n /tyeRNteN/ 4chain store', in which there is a succes­ sion of /N/ + /Q/, and /R/ + /N/, the special segments /N/ and /R/ are high-pitched, that is, accented. This characteristic will be analysed in the next chapter.

I4 〇

SPECIAL SEGMENTS

Vance (1987:81) also reports a personal communication from Hamano Shoko stating that some words may be pronounced with an accent on a special segment in some marginal cases when an unaccented word is quoted emphatically (see the next chapter, section 6.2.4 for examples and discussion). Moreover, it is interesting to observe, as Joo (1977) does (among others), that the special segments frequently alternate with each other and with i, in a somewhat loose manner, as the following examples illustrate: ( 9 ) 从 洲 み 抓 /syoRbeN/ o m o tta /omoQta/ bouzu /boRzu/ toiya° /toiya/ ecch i /eQti/ k ire i

/kirei/

/7/syoNbeN/ ~ o m o u ta /omoRta/ (dialectal) ~ b o n zu /boNzu/ ~ to n ' y a ° /toNya/ ~ ee ch i /e R tih e ic h i /eiti/ 〜

加

~ k ire e /kireR/

urine ‘thought (verb)’ 4bonze* ‘wholesale dealer’ ‘h (name of the letter)’ ‘pretty，

In ancient Japanese documents, there are frequent confusions in the kana spelling of /N/, /Q/, /R/ and the mora 111. One sometimes appears instead of the other, for instance the word ten k i in Modem Japanese, 4weather*is noted as teike in a text dating from the beginning of Heian, with / /J/ replacing n /N/ (Hamada, 1952), or n o b o tte0 # o T 'climbing and... *is noted as n o b o n te in an eleventh-century text, with n /N/ replacing /Q/, the first part of the geminate (Komatsu,1981:199). According to Hamada (1949), /N/ and /Q/ had been written using the same symbol until the Muromachi period. This could lead us to regard /N/ as a sort of nasalized /Q/. Kuroda (1967) has proposed an analysis of /Q/ and /N/ in Yamato, mimetics, and Sino-Japanese within a linear generative framework (Chomsky and Halle, 1968) whereby /Q/ and /N/ are unspecified consonantal segments, the former being [—vocalic, +consonantal, —voiced, —nasal] and the latter [—vocalic, +consonantal, —voiced, +nasal]. In mimetics and verbal flexion, Kuroda implic­ itly assumes that /Q/ and /N/ are one and the same segment, because they stand in complementary distribution in these two native subclasses of the Japanese lexi­ con. In the next chapter (section 6.3), I will present an analysis of the internal structure of /Q/ and /N/ along the same lines as that of Kuroda, but cast in a multilinear representational framework. The underspecified status of /N/ and /Q/ in Japanese has also led Ito (1988) to formulate the Coda Condition. Ito assumes that Japanese /N/ and /Q/ occupy the coda position in heavy syllables. The Coda Condition states that a coda cannot license place features, which forbids /N/ and /Q/ to possess their own place

RELATIVE FREQUENCY OF SPECIAL SEGMENTS

14 1

specifications. Place specifications are acquired through propagation from the following segment.

5 .6

R E L A T IV E F R E Q U E N C Y OF S P E C IA L S E G M E N T S

According to Imae (1960, cited in Hayashi O .,1982), /N/ and /Q/ respectively account for 4.7% and 2.3% of all Japanese moras in textual (token) frequency. This source does not provide any data for /R/.

P R O S O D IC U N IT S

This chapter is devoted to the prosodic units of Japanese, the mora, the syllable, the foot, the prosodic word, and the other upper units. Whereas there is no doubt about the relevance of the mora, the foot, and the prosodic word in Japanese phonology, things are much less clear with regard to the syllable in the most usual sense of the term, i.e. a prosodic constituent which can be structurally light (two-slot syllables, like ka) or heavy (three-slot syllables, like kan, kou [ko:], or kai). The claim I would like to put forward in this chapter is that the syllable actually plays no relevant role in Tokyo Japanese and that this language is a m o ra -co u n tin g m ora la n g u a g e, thus rehabilitating the Japanese native linguistic tradition which has long been satisfied with what corresponds to the mora for the analysis of the various prosodic phenomena of the language. However, it should not be forgotten that some dialects of Japanese such as the Aomori or Akita dialects (north of Honshu) or the Kagoshima dialect (south of Kyushu) are indisputably syllabic and held as such by the proponents of a moraic analysis of Tokyo Japanese, while others, for instance the Kyoto/Osaka dialect or the Izu dialect (south of Tokyo) are clearly moraic and held as such even by the advocates of a syllabic analysis of Tokyo Japanese. Japanese phonologists generally operate a distinction between 4mora dialects, (haku hogen and ^on-mora dialects\ i.e. syllable-based dialects (hi-haku hdgen see for instance Hirayama et al., 1993, Sato R., 2002). Actually, it is mainly Tokyo Japanese that poses a problem with regard to its classification as a mora or syllable dialect, being analysed either as only moraic, or as syllabic with moras acting as subconstituents of syllables. In section 6.1, we shall review the evidence demonstrating the central role played by the mora in Japanese phonology. Section 6.2 critically reassesses the role and relevance of the syllable in the standard language, through a review of the scholarship and reexamination of the alleged evidence in favour of the syllabic approach. It will be shown that the relevance of a light/heavy syllabic distinction is extremely difficult to justify on the basis of the language’s internal evidence. All the phenomena which have been imputed to the action of the syllable in Tokyo Japanese can be accounted for by exclusive reference to the mora and to the foot. In section 6.3,1 present a model of the basic prosodic unit (prosodeme) of Japanese that does not rely on the syllable, in keeping with the

THE MORA

143

traditional Japanese approach. Instead, two different types of prosodemes (= moras) are distinguished: regular CV prosodemes and weak, or deficient, prosodemes, which lack one of the two components V or C. Section 6.4 is dedicated to the foot. We will see that Japanese feet obey a structural constraint that stipulates that they start with a regular mora. Section 6.5 introduces the other upper levels of the Japanese prosodic hierarchy, and section 6.6 offers a conclusion and summary.

6 .1 T H E M O R A

The positive evidence for the mora as a basic, autonomous prosodic unit in Japanese is well established. The mora is the unit of rhythm and of prosodic measurement of the Japanese language. It is the only prosodic unit that has been recognized by the native linguistic tradition, which calls it haku ft (Kindaichi Haruhiko，1972a; Kindaichi and Akinaga 2001)，mか a モ ー ラ （Hattori Shir6, I9601)， or sometimes びw 音 節 （Arisaka Hideyo，1940; see for example Kindaichi 1972b for a general discussion about these questions). Each articulated mora occupies one rhythmic unit. It is perceived as isochro­ nous to other moras (for a review of the phonetic research about the Japanese mora as an isochronous unit, and other questions, see Warner and Arai 2001). Japanese moras may have the following structure: ( 1 ) Structure of Japanese moras CV QyV (with a palatalized consonant) V /N/ (the mora nasal) /Q/ (first part of an obstruent geminate) /R/ (second part of a long vowel) The word

hontou 0

in /sa/, /ko/, /ni/, etc. in /nya/, /kyu/, /tyu/ (chu), /sya/ (s h a ), etc. in /a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /〇/ in /hoN/ h o n 4book? in /moQte / m o tte *to hold and... * in /toR/ to u 4tower,, /maR/ m a a 'euh weir

‘true， is therefore of the same phonological length as

kaminari 'thunder5, that is, four moras.

The modem standard language has 103 distinctive moras, as shown in Table 6.1, where plain moras (chokuon t t # ) stand in opposition to their palata­ lized counterpart (yoon In addition to the mora (haku), Hattori (1960) also refers to the syllable (onsetsu) in one of his papers, but this appears in a footnote, and is made in a rather polemical tone in response to a comment by Kindaichi HaruhiKo, a linguist with whom Hattori often stood in opposition.

PROSODIC UNITS

144

Table 6.1. The 103 distinctive moras of Modern Standard Japanese in phonological transcription (consonants that have phonologized only recently, see Chapter 3, are not included) Plain moras (V or CV)

Palatalized moras (C^V) _

_

き や kya

ぎゅ kyu

ぎょ k y o

ぎ や gya

ぎゅ gyu

ぎょ g y 〇

そ so

し や sya

しゅ syu

しょ sy o

ぜ ze

ぞ zo

じ や zy a

じゅ zyu

じょ z y o

つ tu

て te

と to

ち や tya

ちゅ tyu

ちょ tyo

ち也

づ du

で de

ど do

ぢや办 a

ぢゅ办 M

ぢょ dyo

な na

にが

ぬ nu

ね ne

の no

に や nya

にゆ nyu

にょ nyo

は ha

ひ hi

ふ hu

へ he

ほ ho

ひ や hya

ひゆ hyu

ひょ h yo

ば ba

び bi

ぶ bu

ベ be

ぼ bo

び や bya

びゅ byu

びょ byo

ぱ pa

ぴ pi

ぷ pu

ぺ pe

ぽ po

ぴ や pya

ぴゅ pyu

ぴょ pyo

ま ma

み mi

む mu

め me

も mo

み や m ya

みゆ m yu

みよ m yo

り や rya

りゆ ryu

り上 ryo

あ a

い i

5 u

え e

お 0

か ka

含 ki

く ku

け ke

こ ko

が ga

ぎ gi

ぐ gu

げ ge

ご g〇

さ sa

し si

す su

せ se

ざ za

じ zi

ず zu

た ta

ち ti

だ da

や ya

ゆ yu

ら ra

り ri

わ wa

ゐ vW

る ru 一

一

上 yo れ re we

ろ ro を而

一

一

一

ん N っ Q -

R

The groups in italics correspond to sequences that are no longer distinctive in the contemporary language but for which there exists a specific kana or kana combination.

In Japanese traditional phonology, where the mora is considered to be the only relevant prosodic unit, the following two types of moras are distinguished: Autonomous (or regular) moras リfn びw 自 立 拍 ），which have the structure CV ，C;yV，or V ，except for the mora い /• made up of the onsetless vowel /i/ when it occurs word-intemally, for instance in daigaku0 University5. - Special moras {tokushu haku corresponding to the mora nasal /N/, to the first part of an obstruent geminate /Q/, to the second part of a long vowel /R/, in other words, the elements identified as the special segments (see Chapter 5). The onsetless /i/ い which occurs word-intemally (denoted /J/ in some phonological transcriptions) also belongs to this list.

一

The mora is the metric unit of Japanese verse in poetry and song. Any mora, be it autonomous or special, stands as one beat. In order to illustrate this point, let us

THE MORA

145

consider the following haiku by the poet Yosa Buson. A haiku is composed of three verses. The first verse contains five moras, the second one seven, the last one five.

Ikken no chamise no yanagi oinikeri

(five moras) (seven moras) (five moras)

‘The willow tree By the lone tea house It has grown old’2 The first verse, ikken no, occupies five rhythmic beats, or slots: i.k.ke.n.no and not three, as would prima facie suppose an English or a Chinese ear. Similarly, in oinikeri, o.i.ni.ke.ri, the vowel i occupies one beat. The same applies in songs. Each mora, including /R/, /N/, or /Q/, generally corresponds to a rhythmic unit which is sung over one musical beat, even if exceptions are sometimes found (Tanaka, 2008). The mora is also granted a written status in the kana writing system, so that any mora, including the second part of a long vowel, the mora nasal, or the first part of a geminate, occupies one virtual square on the sheet. The four-mora words ikken レヽっ 6ナ ん ‘one building’ or {ま ん と う ‘true’ thus fit in the same writing space as the words juugo pansento. This shows that the unit syllable does not have cognitive reality, since one would otherwise expect a heavy syllable to alternate with a light syllable more often than with two light syllables. On the contrary, an analysis of this phenomenon based on the mora or the foot provides a better understanding of the data: a mora is replaced by a mora, a foot is replaced by a foot. For further evidence, see Terao (1992, 2002) who shows that the fundamental unit on which speech errors operate is, in Japanese, the mora rather than the syllable.

PROSODIC UNITS

154

6.2.4 A reexamination o f the alleged evidence in favour o f the syllable Let us now review some of the internal evidence which is generally presented in favour of the recognition of a light (i.e. monomoraic) vs. heavy (bimoraic) syllable opposition in Japanese. The phenomena that will be put under scrutiny are the following: initial lowering, unaccentedness of /N/, /Q/, /R/, /i/, accentua­ tion of foreign toponyms, accentuation of the enclitic particle no, accentuation patterns of compound personal names whose second member is -tarou (see also Labrune, 2012, for additional arguments and discussion). As we shall see, in each case an alternative, syllable-free approach to the data, which is either as convinc­ ing as or more convincing than the syllable-based approach is possible, or the linguistic data are ambiguous or incomplete. - Initial dissimilation (initial lowering) Initial dissimilation, or initial lowering, is a phenomenon which is generally accounted for through reference to the syllable (see for instance Haraguchi, 1999). As we shall see in the next chapter, there exists in Japanese a principle stipulating that any word which does not bear an initial accent lexically begins with a Low-High pitch sequence. However, this principle applies only optionally in words beginning with a CV + special mora sequence, in other words, with a putative heavy syllable. Rather, such words can start with a High-High pattern (Hattori, 1954). Compare for instance: (5)

kokusai0 kousai0

LHHH LHHH or HHHH

‘international’ ‘exchange’

At first sight, the correct description of this phenomenon forces one to refer to heavy syllables: initial dissimilation supposedly does not apply when the word starts with a heavy syllable. However, this is nothing more than an ad hoc statement. Compare the two following formulations: (a) Initial dissimilation does not occur when the word starts with a heavy syllable. (b) Initial dissimilation does not occur when the second mora of the word is a deficient mora. The statement in (a) does not have more explanatory power than the one in (b), nor is it simpler. Moreover, even if one follows the syllabic analysis of Japanese, the formulation of the process at hand is not fully adequate, and can therefore not be held as definite evidence for the action of the syllable, because it appears that only a subset of putative heavy syllables, namely those ending in /R/ and /N/, are concerned by this phenomenon. When they end in /Q/ or /i/ (the two other arguably possible syllabic

THE SYLLABLE?

155

codas of Japanese), the phenomenology is different. Unaccented words beginning with CV/ behave like words beginning with CVCV, for instance koikuchi0 ‘strongly flavored’ is uttered LHHH while unaccented words beginning with CVQ are pronounced with a sequence of two low tones, for instance gakkou0 LLHH ‘school’ （ Haraguchi，1977, Tanaka, 2008)• So the issue is actually a little more complicated and controversial than it appears to be at first sight. The intuitive analysis I propose of this phenomenon is the following. Although the rise in pitch which occurs on the second mora of a word is not an accent in the phonological sense of the term, it does actually constitute a prosodic phenomenon with relative relevance, in particular because of its demarcative function, a status which is actually comparable to that of accent on the functional level. One can thus regard initial dissimilation as a mirror image of accent, some sort of accent echo, in other words a secondary accent. Initial dissimilation is characterized by a pitch rise between two moras, while accent consists of a pitch fall between two moras. And, just as accent does not normally occur after a special mora, initial dissimilation does not normally occur before a special mora. In both cases, the near impossibility of pitch change occurs because of the inherent structural weakness of special moras, which prevents them from being the locus of pitch change (from high to low or from low to high). The adopted strategy is identical in both cases: the pitch change (fall in the case of accent, rise in the case of initial dissimilation) is moved one position leftward. In the case of initial dissimilation, there is no leftmost mora available to receive a low pitch, so the initial mora is realized with a high pitch. There is therefore no need to refer to the syllable in order to account for initial dissimilation. - Unaccentedness of /N/, /Q/, /R/, and moraic /i/ (/J/) The phenomenon most frequently invoked in favour of a ternary conception of the Japanese syllable comes from accentual phonology. It involves the prosodic status of the special moras /N/, /Q/, /R/ and that of the moraic vowel /i/, in other words of the elements which, in some other languages, are likely to constitute the second part of a heavy syllable. These elements have been presented in detail in the preceding chapter. Recall that, first of all, they cannot in principle bear accent and have the property of causing a left shift of the accent when they occupy a prosodic position likely to receive accent (section 5.5), a mechanism that I propose naming NADM principle (Non-Accentuation of Deficient Moras) and which will be further developed in 6.3.2 as well as in Chapter 7. For the moment, let us consider the case of loanwords of Western origin in which a default accent is assigned to the antepenultimate mora, as presented in section 5.5. The traditional approach (Kindaichi and Akinaga, 2001) states the following rule: the accent falls on the antepenultimate mora; if the antepenultimate mora consists of a special mora (/N/, /Q/, /R/, 〇r moraic /i/), the accent moves to the preceding mora, striking the pre-

156

PROSODIC UNITS

antepenultimate. Compare for instance a.na.ku.ro.ni.zu.mu {anachro­ nism} and di.su.ka.s.sho.n rather than ^di.su.ka.s.sho.n {dis­ cussion} (dots are used to denote mora boundaries). Note that this traditional approach, which is widely followed by Japanese scholars of the philological mainstream, does not refer to the syllable to account for such accentual patterns. McCawley (1968) proposes a different analysis: for him, the examples above support the claim that the syllable rather than the mora is the prosodic unit of Japanese, because in a heavy syllable only the first mora can be accented. Following his approach, disukasshon has four syllables: di-su-kas-shon (hyphens denote syllable boundaries). The default accent rule of Japanese, which applies to foreign loans, is accordingly reformulated as follows: accent is placed on the syllable containing the third from last mora. Japanese would thus be categorized as a ‘mora-counting syllable language’ whose prosodic unit is supposed to be the syllable and not the mora, even though McCawley also recognizes that the mora plays a major role in Japanese as a ‘unit of phonological distance’. At this point, let us first observe that, as Uwano (2003:74) remarks, the mora approach is just as explanatory as the syllabic one. The first objection to McCawley’s analysis is that if the syllable is indeed the prosodic unit in Japanese, how can we explain that, in an accented heavy syllable, the third component (the coda according to the syllabic approach) is never of the same melodic height as the onset and nucleus? In words such as kyouto 'Kyoto5 or nihon 4Japan,, the fall in pitch that marks the location of the accent occurs before a special mora (before the second part of the long vowel in 丄wto and before the mora nasal in niho[n). The categorization of Japanese as a syllable-accenting language thus appears inappropriate, since only a subpart of the syllable is likely to carry the pitch. It is therefore not empirically true to state that the syllable is accented, because only the first part of it bears a high pitch. This situation is radically different from what occurs in syllabic languages like English where it is the whole syllable which bears the phonetic manifestation of accent. As remarked by Hyman (2003 [1985] :96), in pitch accent languages it is the unit corresponding to the mora that receives the accent, but in the standard formulation of the syllable; this generalization cannot be captured. So the most straightforward and simple analysis is to assume that Japanese counts moras and accentuates moras, since pitches coincide with moras, but that a certain category of moras cannot receive the accent. Moreover, McCawley’s conception of the mechanisms of Japanese accent appears even more inadequate in cases where several special moras follow each other. It sometimes happens that /N/, /Q/, /R/, or /i/ receive the accent. In words like obaasankko /obaRsaNQko/ 4child cherished by his grandmother7or cheenten /tyeRNteN/ ‘chain store’， the accent does not fall on what would constitute， in McCawley’s model， the accentual peak of the syllable but on the first special mora after the nucleus, here /N / and /R/ respectively.

THE SYLLABLE?

157

Higurashi (1983) reports another case in which the presumed second part of a heavy syllable is accented. When the pre-accenting recessive enclitic particle shika 4only5 is combined with an unaccented noun, the final mora of the noun receives an accent, including /N/, /R/, or the moraic /i/. Let us look at the following examples: (6)

Accentual pattern of atonic nouns + shika (from Higurashi 1983:35) miyako-shika /miyako sika/ ‘only the capital’ kouen。 + shika kouen-shika /koReN sika/ ^kouen-shika ‘only the park’ tekkyou。 + shika tekkyou-shika /teQkyoR sika/ ^tekkyou-shika 4only the iron bridge*

miyako。 + shika

Not only is it not the entire syllable that receives the accent but it is not even what constitutes the heart of the syllable, i.e. its nucleus, that does. Such cases are rather marginal, but it is obvious that they cannot be accounted for within McCawley’s approach, thus crucially weakening the overall syllabic analysis of Japanese. Vance (1987:81, quoting a p.c. by Hamano Shoko) also mentions interesting cases in emphatic speech where an atonic word ending in /N / can receive the accent on /N / before the quotative particle to. So for instance in kouban to itta 41 said p o l i c e b o x 5, kouban 'police box' normally atonic {koubarf) is pronounced kouban with an accent on the final /N/. Hamano (1998:32) also says that in some ‘dramatic uses’ of mimetic words， a special mora can be accented as in paanto or pinpin-to. Finally, one has to take into account the fact that some dialects of Japanese belonging to the same dialect subfamily as Tokyo Japanese, and very closely related to it, allow special moras to receive an accent in a very general fashion. Thus, in the Izu dialect,11 there exists a possible contrast between tou ^ HL ‘political party’ and 如ii (砂 ！ ）十 LH ‘ten’， or between to / 櫂 ‘a paddle’ and 貝 ‘shell’ （ Uwano, 2003). As Uwano correctly observes， this type of contrast would be totally impossible in a syllable-based language like English. - Accentuation of foreign toponyms Other pieces of evidence supposed to prove the relevance of the heavy syllable have been presented since McCawley. Prima facie, one of the most convincing examples is provided by Kubozono (1996). Examining the assignment of accent in foreign toponyms (a class representative of accent assignment processes in loanwords in general), Kubozono observes that although the default accentuation 11 The Izu dialect belongs to the Tokyo type family of dialects. Izu is located 100 km southwest of Tokyo.

158

PROSODIC UNITS

rule stated above applies quite generally in accented loans, whatever formulation of the rule one adopts— be it a la Kindaichi and Akinaga or a la McCawley— it nevertheless encounters a number of exceptions. Such exceptions are accented on the fourth or fifth mora from the end, as in monburan /moNburaN/ 4Mont Blanc5, amazon /amazoN/ 4the Amazon5, pirenee /pireneR/ 'the Pyrenees5, rather than ^monburan, ^amazon, ^pirenee as predicted both by Kindaichi and Akinaga and McCawley’s analyses. Taking such examples into consideration, Kubozono posits the following accentuation rule: the accent falls on the penultimate syllable if it is heavy, on the antepenultimate otherwise. However, we shall see in the following chapter (section 7.2.5) how the present approach to the structure of the foot and mora provides a simpler account of these crucial examples, without referring to heavy and light syllable types. - Accentual behaviour of no Another example worthy of interest is examined by Miyake (1943), Martin (1952), Vance (1987,2008), Kubozono (1999a), Haraguchi (1999), Uwano (2003), among others. It involves the determination particle no, whose accentual behaviour is rather peculiar. When no occurs after a noun which bears a final accent, that noun sometimes undergoes de-accentuation. Consider the following examples.

(7)

a. yama + no

otoko + no b. nihon + no

kinou + no

‘of the mountain’ yama-no° otoko-no。 ‘of the man’

nihon-no°

‘of Japan’

kinou-no 。 ‘of yesterday’

c. kokoro + no

kokoro-no

‘of the heart’

d. me + no

me-no

‘of the eye’

e. dou + no ten + no

dou-no ten-no kai-no

‘of bronze’ ‘of the sky’ ‘of the shell’

kai + no

According to Kubozono, an adequate description of these examples can be made through explicit reference to the syllable, and should be formulated as follows: words longer than one syllable such as yama, otoko in (a), nihon and kinou in (b), accented on the final syllable become unaccented when followed by the no particle, while monosyllabic words (whose only syllable is either heavy or light and bears an accent) like me, dou, ten or kai maintain the original accent. This phenomenon might at first sight appear to be quite convincing as a justification for the relevance of heavy syllables. However, on the one hand, many apparent exceptions can be found (see Vance, 1987:82, 2008:156—157 for lists and addi­ tional references). For instance, takusan tmuch, is not de-accented before no: takusan + no yields takusan-no and not *takusan-no°. On the other hand, some

THE SYLLABLE?

159

speakers do not realize (7b) as predicted by Kubozono. This is probably why, according to Vance (1987) and Uwano (2003) accent deletion before no should not be taken as reliable evidence for syllable structure. Moreover, it seems that words such as nihon or kinou that undergo de-accentuation before no are actually lexical exceptions (Takayama Tomoaki, p.c. 2009) belonging to a close and numerically limited set, while the takusan type, which does not yield de­ accentuation, is more likely to be the general, default type. Clearly, the issue is controversial and does not reach consensus. The data would need further investigation to determine which pattern is regular: the one involving deaccentuation or the one involving no deaccentuation. An alternative approach to these data consists of positing that the words belonging to types (7b) and (7e), which end in a special mora and bear a surface accent on the penultimate mora, actually have an underlying accent on the final mora, as follows: /nihoN/, /kinoR/, /doR/, /teN/, /kai/ (see also sections 7.2.3 and 7.2.5). This analysis is also proposed by Uwano (2003:75). The underlyingly final accent is shifted one mora leftward by virtue of the NADM principle stipulating that special moras cannot bear an accent at the phonetic level, except in a few special cases such as the examples with shika above, as well as the obaasankko example previously mentioned. This analysis accounts very easily for exceptions like takusan, because takusan is accented on the mora sa at the underlying level, as well as at the surface level, contrary to the words in (7b) and (7e), which actually carry a final accent at the underlying level. This is why they behave exactly like yama and otoko in (7a) rather than like kokoro in (7c). In dou, ten, or kai, it is the initial mora of the word which, on the surface, receives the accent. In this case, de-accentuation does not occur, and the accent is maintained on the initial mora, a phenomenon which has to do with the fact that the beginning of a word constitutes a privileged position, where contrasts are more often preserved and neutralizations avoided (Beckman J.，1999). - Personal compound names whose second member is -tarou Let us now examine the following examples, also cited by Kubozono (1999a) as another piece of evidence for the syllable. Consider the following personal names (all from Kubozono 1999a: 46, romanization adapted; when no accent informa­ tion is provided, it means that the word does not have its proper accent pattern because it never occurs in isolation): (8)

Accentuation of personal names ending in -tarou a. ki + tarou kitarou。 ne° + tarou netarou。 b. kin + tarou

kyuu + tarou

kintarou。 kyuutarou 。

l6 〇

PROSODIC UNITS

c. momo° + tarou

kane° + tarou

momotarou kanetarou

d. chikara + tarou

chikaratarou karee。 + tai.ou kareetarou urutoraman + tarou urutoramantarou

According to Kubozono (1999a), the accent behaviour of the compounds with

-tarou is predictable on the basis of the syllable structure of the first member. When the first member is monosyllabic, the compound is unaccented. Otherwise, it is accented. Note that -tarou exhibits two different accent patterns when combined with a bimoraic first member: a monosyllabic N 1 (8b) yields an unaccented compound just like a monomoraic N 1 (8a), whereas forms with a bisyllabic N1 receive the accent on the first member (8c) but only if it is also bimoraic. However, the data in (8) can receive an alternative account. First, as Kubozono (1999a) mentions, personal compound names with -jirou behave in a different way, in so far as they do not trigger the same accent behaviour. The first member kin is accented, and thus behaves like kane rather than like ko when combined with -jirou. We find Kinjirou (not Kinjirou0) and Kanejirou vs. Kojirou0. This shows that the conditioning of the accent rule is lexical rather than strictly phonological, since not all suffixes activate the rule which is supposed to refer to the syllable: -tarou does, but -jirou does not. Second, examination of the examples in (8) shows that trimoraic bisyllabic first members behave like trimoraic trisyllabic ones (8d). The syllabic approach fails to capture the fact that momotarou and kareetarou, whose first members are both bisyllabic, do not receive the same accentuation. This suggests that it is not the number of syllables that is crucial but something else. One can achieve a correct descriptive account of these data by referring simply to the foot and to its constituents, i.e. moras. The rule can accordingly be reformulated as follows: when the first member is equivalent to a monomoraic foot or to a bimoraic foot ending in a special mora, the compound is atonic (8a, b). When it is equal to a bimoraic foot ending in a regular mora, the accent is placed on the final mora of N1 (8c). Finally, when the first member contains more than one foot made up of two regular moras, the accent is placed on the initial mora of -tarou. To conclude, unlike the mora, the relevance of the syllable appears highly questionable. First, the models of the Japanese syllable which have been pro­ posed in the literature reflect the existence of a problem concerning the articula­ tion between the mora and the syllable with regard to the foot. Second, the lack of traditional evidence in favour of the syllable or of its constituents is particularly blatant. Finally, the linguistic data which have been claimed to attest the relevance of the syllable are either not sufficiently documented, or they are ambiguous and can receive an alternative, syllable-free account.

THE BASIC PROSODIC U N IT IN JAPANESE

l6 l

In the next section, I shall propose a new model of the basic Japanese prosodic unit that does not rely on the syllable.

6.3 FOR A STRICTLY BINARY MODEL OF THE BASIC PROSODIC UNIT IN JAPANESE The facts discussed so far show the inadequacy of a three-position syllabic model (onset-nucleus-coda) in the phonology of Japanese. This calls for another analy­ sis of the basic prosodic unit of Japanese, that I will temporarily call a prosodeme, following Trubetzkoy’s term. The ideas that are developed here are inspired by Larry Hyman5s theory of phonological weight (2003 [1985]), which argues that the universal phonological anchor tier consists of weight units, or beats, that correspond to moras, and that the syllable is not a universal constituent but a language-particular construct built out of the weight units. On the basis of the evidence reviewed so far, I claim that the basic prosodic unit o f Japanese is maximally binary, i.e. with two positions: position 1 ,the onset (ideally represented by C) and position 2, the nucleus (ideally represented by V), as shown below.12 Structure of the basic prosodeme

A

(9)

I V

I c

The dots represent linear positions corresponding to the skeleton as conceived in multilinear phonology, that is, some sort of temporal projection of each segmen­ tal unit within a prosodeme, which allows the encoding and representation of quantity. Accordingly, geminate consonants and long vowels are considered to be one single segmental unit (actually a set of distinctive features) associated with two skeletal positions, whereas affricates or some types of diphthongs correspond to two segments (i.e. two sets of distinctive features) linked to one position. In the model argued for here, there is no need for a more complex structure such as the heavy syllable, that is, for a three-position prosodic unit. All the elements which can be considered to belong to the third position within a syllable in competing approaches are to be analysed as so many distinct prosodemes.

12 For the sake of convenience， I use the terms ‘onset’ and ‘nucleus， to refer to, respectively, the first and second position constituents of the prosodeme.

162

PROSODIC UNITS

Further, and most importantly, some prosodemes are to be considered as structurally incomplete, in the sense that they contain an empty position, either the onset or the nucleus. These units will be called ‘deficient’，‘weak’， or 4degenerate \ Japanese is thus characterized by the fact that it contains two types of prosodemes: regular and deficient. Deficient prosodemes may belong to the following four types: - Prosodemes containing only one nuclear vowel. - Prosodemes containing /N / ，/Q/ ，/R/ (the so-called ‘special moras’ of the Japanese linguistic tradition). - Prosodemes containing a devoiced vowel. - Prosodemes containing an epenthetic vowel. Note that the units recognized as deficient prosodemes here do not correspond exactly to the special moras of Japanese traditional phonology (see Chapter 5 as well as section 6.1 above), since they also comprise onsetless vowels other than /i/, moras containing a devoiced vowel, as well as those containing an epenthetic vowel. Let us now examine the structure and representation of the deficient prosodemes. (10)

Deficient prosodeme made up of a vowel (with empty onset)

The representation in (10) is that of onsetless prosodemes whose nucleus is filled by a vocoid, for instance e in kangaeru 'to think\ or / in kai 4sheir. The three so-called special moras /N/, /Q/, and /R/ are deficient moras which, I assume, have the representations in (11): (11)

Prosodemes made up of a special mora /R/

IQ/

/N /

A

A

A

[+cons]

[+cons] [4-nasal]

[-cons]

TH E BASIC PROSODIC U N IT IN JAPANESE

16 3

/R/ consists of a [—consonantal] segmental specification, while /Q/ is [+consonantal].13 /N / is also [+consonantal] but note that it contains an additional segmental specification in comparison to /Q/, the nasality feature. In fact, except for the [土consonantal] feature specification， which simply encodes their vocoid or contoid nature, /R/ and /Q/ have no segmental specification at the underlying level. Note also that the /R/ features are linked to the second position, but the /N/ and /Q/ features to the first one. Let us now examine two other types of deficient moras: prosodemes containing a devoiced vowel (already discussed in section 2.6) and prosodemes containing an epenthetic vowel: (12)

Prosodemes made up of a devoiced vowel

八I

參

一

I I C

I c

V

In the case of devoiced vowels, a V segment present in the underlying form is phonetically deleted on the surface, but the structural position initially associated with the nucleus (V) is not. The nucleus is thus left empty, but it nonetheless remains as a position at the phonological level14 (possibly with a [—consonantal] feature), thus yielding a dencient unit. The proposal to include the moras with a devoiced vowel in the set of the ‘special moras’ was also made by Akinaga (1968), but her proposal has not been followed up in subsequent studies. (13)

Prosodemes containing an epenthetic vowel

八I

參

I c

一

i

i

C

V

The exact phonological status of epenthetic vowels in phonological representations and derivations constitutes a major problem for phonological theory, which still awaits a proper solution. Nevertheless, whatever the theoretical framework, an epenthetic vowel comes down to an empty position at the most underlying level which receives

13 The feature [consonant] is defined here following Chomsky and Halle (1968). It indicates a sound which is produced with a radical obstruction in the mid-sagittal area of the vocal tract. 14 See Hyman (2003 [ 1985]) and Kager (1997) for arguments in favour of the theoretical existence of such vowels in languages.

164

PROSODIC UNITS

default phonetic realization at a later stage. In that sense, epenthetic vowels can be considered to be the opposite of devoiced vowels, as seen in (12), because devoiced vowels correspond to a position initially filled which loses its phonetic content. Onsetless prosodemes, those containing epenthetic and devoiced vowels, as well as special moras thus display strong representational similarity in the approach proposed here: they all contain an empty position at some level of the representation. This is very desirable, because these four types of moras share a common empirical characteristic which has not received sufficient attention in previous studies: they are not readily accentable. We have already mentioned the fact that /N/, /Q/, and /R/ are not, under normal conditions, able to receive an accent, but it is also a well-established fact in the phonology of Japanese that onsetless vowels, epenthetic vowels, and devoiced vowels share the same prop­ erty, although not as systematically as /N/, /Q/, and /R/ (a point to which we will come back below). The following examples illustrate this fact: (14)

a. Accent shift caused by the presence of a devoiced vowel (see also section 2.6) in conservative Tokyo Japanese expected form realized form hukaku ['(f)uikakiu] > hukaku [(^ly'kakui] 4deeply? kisha ['kipa] > kisha [ki'pa] ‘train’ b. Accent shift caused by the presence of an onsetless vowel expected form realized form keizai-ryoku > keizai-ryoku ‘economical power’ kangaeru 15 > kangaeru ‘to think’ anaunsu > anaunsu {announce} c. Accent shift caused by the presence of an epenthetic vowel in a CV mora expected form realized form amusuterudamu > amusuterudamu 4Amsterdam7 andesu-kai > andesu-kai 'Andes Club9

That moras containing an epenthetic vowel do not behave in the same way as moras containing an underlying vowel, but rather like special moras, is further demonstrated by the fact that four-mora loanwords that end in a sequence of two CV moras are mostly unaccented (90%) if their final vowel is underlying,

15 Accent shifts caused by the presence of an onsetless vowel are rather inconsistent. Accent variation occurs with certain words but not with others, for instance ‘to think’ can be realized as kangaeru or kangaeru, and so does kotaeru / kotaeru 'answer* and totonoeru / totonoeru 4to arrange', but other verbs containing the same ae sequence do not seem to accept variation. So haeru *to grow1 (*haeru) is accented on the penultimate mora with no possibility of accent shift, while kaeru *to return5 is only accented on the antepenultimate (*kaeru), in violation of the verb accent rule which requires tonic verbs to be accented on the penultimate mora.

THE BASIC PROSODIC U N IT IN JAPANESE

165

whereas the ratio goes down to 30% if the final vowel is epenthetic (Kubozono, 2006b), a percentage which is close to that displayed by words ending in a supposedly heavy syllable, that is, words ending in a special mora. So not only are epenthetic vowels difficult to accentuate, their presence also causes word accent computation to differ significantly when they occur word-finally. Note that the occasional ability of onsetless moras to repel the accent constitutes a serious problem for phonology because it is commonly admitted that onsets do not contribute to prosodic weight. However, the data under examination contra­ dict this assumption if analysed through the syllabic mirror.16 In the present approach, this can be accounted for by the fact that structurally, onsetless moras are phonological objects that contain a position with no segmental specification, in the same way as moras containing an epenthetic or a devoiced vowel. At the phonetic level, this corresponds to a lack of acoustic prominence, not suitable for receiving an accent. The syllabic framework does not allow us to capture onset­ less, devoiced, and epenthetic vowels and would-be third-position syllable con­ stituents (i.e. codas) as entities belonging to the same category, whereas the model developed here does, because all four elements are conceived as containing an empty slot, which explains their relative weakness or transparency. Actually, the relevance of the onset for prosodic weight is already attested in the Manydshu, a compilation of poems dating back to the eighth century. The meter of Japanese poetry is fixed, and it is based on the number of moras per verse. The verses of tanka, the most representive genre of Japanese classical poetry, are composed respectively of 5 -1 -5 -1 -1 moras. Quite interestingly, this meter is not always respected. This notably happens when the verse contains an onsetless vowel, as the following two examples taken from the Mari'ydshu illustrate: (15)

- 8 moras instead of 7: imada sakazukeru ‘does not bloom yet’ （poem 2123) - 9 moras instead of 7

tori age mahe ni oki

‘taking (it) and putting (it) in the front’ （poem 4129)

Such hypermetric poetic licences are called 如 ■ /* /.( 字 余 り ） . It is important to note that the onsetless vowel can occur at the beginning of the verse, as in the first example, thus excluding the hypothesis of syneresis. I claim that this phenomenon can be accounted for along the same lines of analysis as the one I adopt for modem Tokyo Japanese, that is, syllables did not exist in eighth-century Japanese, and the basic prosodic unit consisted of a twoslot element equivalent to a mora. When one of the two slots is empty, the unit is

16 A small number of languages, including English, in which the structure of the onset is argued to be prosodically relevant have been reported (see Kelly, 2004, Davis, 1988, Everett, and Everett, 1984). See also Topintzi (2010) for an extensive study.

16 6

PROSODIC UNITS

considered to be deficient， and presents a type of phonological behaviour which is not that of full units. In the verses above, it is clear that deficient moras may not always count as one rhythmic unit as full moras do. In the above representations, empty positions generally represent the vestige of segmental material which has been disassociated, either from a diachronic or a synchronic perspective. From the diachronic point of view, as already mentioned in the previous chapter, special moras /N/, /Q/, and /R/ are known to result from consonant or vowel loss in Yamato Japanese, a process which has left an empty structural position in the underlying representation. Interestingly, internal onsetless vowels in simplex words are also the result of a similar process. Archaic Japanese did not accept onsetless vowels morpheme-intemally, so that all the modem occur­ rences of internal Vi V2 sequences are due to the loss of a consonant in native words. For instance, modem koe 4voice, comes from kowe, a u 4to meet' from afu < *apu.

6.3.1 Japanese as a syllable-less language The reader will have noticed that the model of the Japanese prosodeme proposed here corresponds exactly to the mora, which leads us to consider that the mora is the core prosodeme of Japanese. I assume that moras are structured as in (16). (16)

Structure of Japanese moras

參

參

I I C

V

Recall that in the case of special moras, one of the two positions, C or V ,is left empty at some level of the analysis. Taking into account the phenomena reviewed thus far, three other lines of analysis of the prosodic structure of Japanese ought to be considered. It is important to examine them in order to justify the claim made here. These options appear in (17a-c), while (17d) represents the analysis which we adopt here (the dots representing segment position are omitted). (17)

o

0

A

1

A C

V

A / 1 C

d.

c.

b.

a.

V

G C

V

C

V

T H E BASIC PROSODIC U N IT IN JAPANESE

16 7

The first representation (17a) consists of positing that moras and (light) syllables, although isomorphic, coexist in Japanese, and that they are organized hierarchically. This option is undoubtedly the most cautious one. In this repre­ sentation, however, there is a redundancy between the mora and the syllable, so that the principle of Occam’s razor leads us to adopt one of the three remaining possibilities, (17b), (17c), or (17d). The second option, (17b), appears to be the least challenging one for the model which actually dominates in current phonological theory. However, the facts examined throughout this chapter did not provide any evidence that there would be any advantage in distinguishing an onset directly attached to the syllable, whereas the nucleus would be associated with a mora. On the contrary: we have seen that there exists in Japanese a remarkable cohesion between the element C and the element V of a prosodeme. Such a close cohesion is not reported for truly ‘syllabic’ languages. In addition to the facts already presented, one can also mention data taken from stuttering speech which can be taken as evidence that (17b) is not the right representation. According to Ujihira and Kubozono (1994) and Kubozono (2006a), the portion repeated by Japanese stutterers at the beginning of words starting with a consonant is a CV unit in 88.6% of the cases (for instance, na-nana/nde 4why*). Only in 1.2% of the cases is it a C unit. This, as Kubozono observes, differs from English, for instance, where initial segmentation generally occurs before the vowel (n-n-n-n/ever). If one assumes that it is not the syllable and its constituents which are the units of prosodic encoding but rather a prosodeme corresponding to the mora, these data can be accounted for quite naturally. Also, recall that, as stated earlier, the temporal adjustment between C and V is much more important in Japanese than it appears to be in syllabic languages. We can interpret this fact as a consequence of the strictly binary and symetric structure of the Japanese prosodeme, and of the strong solidarity and equality of status which exists between its two components. Since (17b) hardly reflects this cohesion and equality between a C and a V belonging to the same prosodeme， it won’t be adopted here. The elimination o f (17a) and (17b) leaves us with two possibilities: (17c) and (17d). (17c) considers the syllable as the only necessary constituent, but limited to a maximally binary structure, more or less in the fashion of Lowenstamm (1996) or Scheer (2004) who defend the idea that all syllables, in all languages, consist fundamentally of a CV structure. If we adopted this position, the references to the mora could be simply replaced by references to the syllable. This choice would have the advantage of not questioning the very largely followed postulate accord­ ing to which all languages have syllables, and which views the mora as an optional constituent. However, it seems desirable to maintain a conceptual distinction between the mora and the light syllable, in other words, to ensure that these two terms are not understood as different denominations of the same entity. This is why we shall adopt the hypothesis in (17d). The justification for this stand is that

16 8

PROSODIC UNITS

Tokyo Japanese prosodemes have a number of specific properties which, as explored in the preceding pages, make it phonologically different from syllablebased languages.

6.3.2 The Non-Accentuation o f Deficient Moras Principle (NADM) We have seen that on the structural and functional levels, two types of moras have to be distinguished: full moras which have a CV structure, and weak or deficient moras in which one of the two positions is empty. The main empirical difference between full and deficient moras is that deficient moras are not able to work as proper accent kernels under normal and general conditions. From now on, this inability of deficient moras to bear the accent will be referred to as the NADM principle or constraint: (18)

Non-Accentuation of Deficient Moras (NADM) Deficient moras must not be accented

Examples of the NADM principle application have been presented on many occasions throughout this book, for instance in sections 5.5 and 6.2.4, and will be seen again in sections 7.1.4, 7.2.3, and 7.3.2. This principle is nothing but a reformulation of the well-known OT constraint PeakProminence (Prince and Smolensky, 1993:39) which stipulates that more prominent elements make better prosodic peaks within a foot. Let us take for instance a sequence such as /hoN/ hon 4book \ which, in a syllabic approach, would be interpreted as a heavy syllable. In our model, this is simply a foot made up of a regular mora, /ho/, followed by a deficient mora, /N/. Further, we shall assume, as argued in section 6.2.4 (see also sections 7.2.3 and 7.3.2) that /hoN/ is underlyingly accented on the final mora /N/, and that the accent moves to /ho/ at the surface level: ['h〇N]. This process can be accounted for in an extremely simple manner by the interaction of the following three constraints: NADM, Max(A ccent) and FaithIO(Accent). NADM dominates Max(A ccent), the constraint which imposes that an accent present in the input has a correspondent in the output, and Max(A ccent) dom­ inates F aithIO(A ccent) which demands that an accent present in the input be preserved in the same location in the output. The ranking between the three constraints accounts for the accentual shift to the initial mora of the morpheme, as shown in (19) (19)

Interaction of M ax(A ccent), NADM and FaithIO(Accent) a. Hierarchy: NADM »

M ax(A ccent) »

FaithIO(A ccent)

T H E BASIC PROSODIC U N IT IN JAPANESE

169

b. Tableau /hoN/

NADM

M ax(A ccent)

*

*^a. hon b. hon c. hon°

FaithIO(Accent)

*! *!

*

In (19b), the candidate in b., which infringes the dominant constraint NADM, is the worst one. O f the two remaining possibilities, a. with initial accent, and c., without accent, a. is selected as the optimal output because, contrary to c., it preserves the accent present in the input, although in a location which is not the original one. Note that the constraint Max(Accent) does not govern positional faithfulness but the preservation in the output of an element present in the input, contrary to FaithIO(A ccent) (see also section 7.3.2). Dialects such as the Izu dialect which allow special moras to be accented at the surface level can be assumed to have a different hierarchy, ranking NADM below FaithIO( A ccent). However, some deficient moras may, under certain conditions, carry the accent even in Tokyo Japanese. Variation is frequently observed, especially in cases of onsetless and epenthetic vowels, which are sometimes accented. The mora nasal /N/ can also receive the accent in certain cases, as in obaasankko ^hild cherished by his/her grandmother5, as well as /R/ (see also the examples in (6) above), whereas /Q/, for instance, never can. Reliable and phonetically controlled data which would inform us about the factors which condition this variation, especially concerning the accentuation of onsetless and epenthetic vowels, is still needed. In a constraint-based approach, we would be led to posit that there exists a constraint placed higher in the hierarchy than NADM, and that this higher constraint forces an accent to be put on a deficient mora. I leave the issue of the exact nature of this constraint for future investigation. Nonetheless, the fact that all deficient moras do not always behave exactly in the same manner is indisputable and will lead us to the proposal that Japanese moras are arranged along a scale, as will be shown now.

6.3.3 Hierarchy o f Japanese prosodemes (moras) Because the opposition between full and deficient moras is not dichotomous, the conception o f the Japanese prosodeme developed above needs some further refinements. It seems reasonable to assume that Japanese moras have to be classified along a scalar hierarchy according to their acoustic prominence. This is because, as just stated, the NADM principle is neither absolute nor free of variation. The general scale of Japanese moras according to their relative capac­ ity to receive the accent is as follows (here denote empty positions):

PROSODIC UNITS

17 〇

CV » -V » c* I propose that these three major mora types be further subclassified as follows:17

Ca > Co > Ce > Cu > C i

> • « > • 〇>

> •/

> R> N > Q

-< CVepenthetic CVdevoiced

•/, CVepenthetic» CVdev〇iced seem to occupy the same position in the hierar­ chy, in between *u and /R/, hence the use of the brace. The relative capacity of a mora to receive the accent is conditioned by its intrinsic phonetic prominence and acoustic energy, as well as by the number of filled structural positions it contains. Any consonant followed by a high vowel (for instance m i, k u ), the mora nasal, the first part of a geminate, as well as voiceless consonants when followed by a devocalized nucleus vowel, on the one hand, are quite unsurprisingly characterized by their relative lack of prominence. On the other hand, onsetless vowels can also be considered as relatively weak, in any case weaker than CV moras. This may be more unexpected at first sight, but, following Burzio (1994:158) one can assume that onsets contribute to acoustic energy, so onsetless units are prosodically weaker. As for moras containing an epenthetic vowel,I assume that their lack of prominence is phonological (or representational) rather than phonetic, even if the exact nature of their phonological representation is an issue which must be further investigated. Moreover, among onsetless moras, it is also clear that *a and are not4as weak9as •/, mu or even *e. In addition to its phonological structure, the intrinsic sonority of the mora thus unquestionably conditions its capacity to receive the accent.18 However, I argue that the relationship between accent, sonority, and structure is not direct. Rather, it is mediated by reference to the foot, as we shall see now. •〇

6.4 THE FOOT The canonical Japanese foot (/zmび(9 フ ツ 卜 or the following structures:

たw脚

） is bimoraic. It can have

17 Tanaka (2008) also proposes that the special moras should be arranged along a hierarchy: /J/ > /R/ > /N/ > /Q/ because they do not have a uniform action with respect to accent location in certain categories of words. In particular, his study shows that /Q/ does not behave like the other three special moras. 18 The relationship between sonority and accent in Japanese has been brought to light by Tanaka (1998, 2008) and Yokotani (1997). It is also attested for other languages (Hayes 1995; Kenstowicz 1994b).

T H E FOOT

(20)

Japanese (C)VCV (C)VV (C)VC

171

feet = (|i|i) kata 4shape \ iru° 4to exist5 hae° ^fly5, ou ['〇:] ^ in g 5 hon 4book5, kit(to)° 4certainly5

Prevocalic consonants can be palatalized (i.e. Cj). In (C)VC, the final C equals the mora nasal (/N/) or the first part of a geminate (/Q/). In (C)VV, the second V can be equivalent to /R/. However, monomoraic feet (sometimes called degenerate feet) are not uncommon in Japanese. Kubozono (1999a) argues that every foot must be entirely contained within the same morpheme, so that two adjacent monomoraic feet will not form a single bimoraic foot in polymorphemic lexemes: p((i) + p(|i) = p(|i)F(jLi) rather than p( 叫 )• Each foot is supposedly parsed as a separate degenerate foot. Similarly, trimoraic feet (or heavy feet) can also be found. For instance, Tanaka (2008:203) argues, on the basis of an empirical study of foreign words accentuation, that trimoraic feet must be posited in certain cases where a sequence of two regular moras is followed by /Q/. He proposes the following respective footing for the words tomato {tomato), binuru {vinyl}, and sonetto {sonnet): (toma)to, bi(nii)ru, but (soneQ)to.19 Although recognition of the foot in Japanese phonology is rather recent, dating back to Poser5s seminal 1990 work, the evidence for its relevance is massive and uncontroversial. Poser (1990) provides a number of foot-based phenomena which demonstrate the significant role of the bimoraic— rather than disyllabic_ foot in Japanese morpho-phonology through data taken from geisha / bargirl client names, kinship terms, rustic girls5 names, ren'ydkei reduplication, mimetic bases, the secret language of jazzmen, and compound accentuation. From Poser’s list, let us present the well-known case o f hypocoristic formation. We will then introduce two other foot-based phenomena: women's secret lan­ guage (nyobo kotoba) derivatives, and compound loans truncations. Hypoconstics are made by adding the suffix -chan to a bimoraic foot contain­ ing segmental material obtained from the base (the complete name). When the name is longer than five moras, two-foot-long hypocoristic derivatives can also be found. The important point to note is that one-, three-, or five- mora-long patterns are prohibited. This provides robust evidence that it is at the foot level that hypocoristic derivation operates. (21)

Hypocoristic formation Full name hypocoristies

midori tarou

mu-chan, mit-chan, mido-chan taro-chan, taa-chan

^mi-chan ^ta-chan

19 Notice that sonetto is not accented on the antepenultimate mora ne, as would be expected if Q behaved exactly like the other special moras of Japanese, but on the pre-antepenultimate mora so.

172

PROSODIC UNITS

kazuhiko kazu-chan kenzaburou。 ken-chan, kenzabu-chan

*ka-chan *kazuhi-chan ^ke-chan, ^kenza-chan ^kenzaburo-chan

Derivatives used in the feminine language and originating from nyobo kotoba ( 女 房 言 葉 )， an ancient secret language used by court ladies， are also based on the foot. Nyobo kotoba forms are obtained by truncation of the base to foot-size, and addition of the polite prefix 〇-, as shown in (22). Note that the truncated base can be equivalent to two light syllables, or a heavy syllable, in a syllable-based approach. But it can never consist of two heavy syllables, thus demonstrating once again that Japanese feet are made up of moras rather than syllables. ( 22)

Nyobo kotoba derived form (o- + |i|i) base ‘sweet potato’ satsuma imo° o-satsu o-juu ‘stackable box’ juuba/co。 o-den 'oden (Japanese hotchpotch) * dengaku 。 o-nesho ‘bed wetting’ neshouben

The foot is also used as the basic unit in compound abbreviated loanwords (Labrune 2007), which are normally built by extracting one bimoraic foot (generally the initial one) out of each component of the original form, yielding a two-foot-long derivative. (23)

Compound abbreviated loanwords base truncated form {digital camera} dejitaru kamera deji-kame° {remote control} rimouto kontorouru rimo-korf {engine stop) enjin sutoppu en-suto° {patrol car} patorouru kaa pato-kaa

‘motor stalling’ ‘police patrol car’

The foot is also the prosodic domain within which certain accent shifts occur. Whenever several vowels in the environment of a devoiced vowel are likely to receive accent as a consequence of a NADM accent shift, the basic principle seems to be that the accent will remain within the same foot (Tanaka, 2001). Another study by Tanaka (1998, 2008) highlights the fact that in certain cases, evaluation of the relative sonority of the vowels in order to determine accent placement occurs within the head foot. Accent then falls on the most sonorous vowel in the foot (see section 7.3.1 (35) for examples about the correlation between vowel sonority and accent placement). Finally, in their experimental study of Japanese speech rhythm, Ayusawa et al. (1998) have also found that a high proportion of the units of rhythm consist of two moras, that is, one foot.

173

T H E FOOT

I assume that Japanese feet obey a well-formedness constraint, which enforces that they start with a mora o f relative prominence, preferably a full CV mora, i.e. the canonical prosodeme of the language. So the inability of deficient moras to be tonic does not come directly from their weak sonority, nor from their structural incompleteness, but from their position within feet. Let us review again the structure of the canonical Japanese foot. Recall that it can have the following shapes: (C)VCV ，（ C)VV, or (C)VC. Since the level of the syllable is considered as not relevant in the prosodic hierarchy of Japanese, feet are directly made up of moras, as in (24). (24)

Structure of Japanese feet

八

A

A

•

參

1

1

1

1

(C)

V

C

V

•

•

A A • • 參 l l 1

•

(C)

V

V

A

A

參 • 參 參

III (C) V c

In the prosodic model of Japanese proposed here, the role usually devoted to the heavy syllable is entirely taken up by the foot. Supposedly heavy syllables of the shape CVC or CVV are simply reinterpreted as feet containing a deficient mora in the second position, i.e. CVC* or CV«V. Another important characteristic of Tokyo Japanese feet is that they are trochaic, that is, initially headed (Shinohara, 2000; Labrune, 2002; Ota, 2003). I further propose that a well-formedness constraint determines the shape of the Japanese foot:20 (25)

Foot well-formedness constraint *F[m A foot must start with a full mora

In other words, feet must be properly headed by a full mora, and their head is aligned to the left (trochees). A full mora is a mora whose structure corresponds to one of those standing at the left end of the hierarchy in 6.3.3.21

20 I would like to thank Marc Plenat for first suggesting to me the existence of a constraint such as *Ftw, and for providing many valuable comments on the issue of moras and feet interaction. The *F[m constraint in (25) is actually a cover constraint for a set of three different constraints (see Labrune, 2012). 21 As stated in section 6.3.3, the border between full and deficient moras is somewhat uncertain. It falls somewhere in between Cu and »e, depending on a variety of factors which remain to be discovered.

P R O S O D IC U N I T S

174

All this means that deficient moras are not, except in very special or secondary cases, in a position to stand as foot heads and to receive the accent. This is obviously so in the case of /N/, /Q/, and /R/, even if exceptions can be found (the already oft-cited o b a a s a n k k o ). It is less obviously so in cases of onsetless vowels. The *F[w constraint predicts that feet that start with a vowel cannot be accented on the initial mora. Yet, such feet do exist in Japanese, which contradict this prediction. However, it seems that such feet are in the majority word-initial, as in ito thread5, a m a z o n 'the Amazon5, for instance. Remember that onsetless vowels have an intermediary status in the deficientness gradation, and it seems that when they occur word-initially, they are more able to stand as accent nucleus than in the word-internal position. Interestingly, a statistical survey carried out on a corpus made up of 211 toponyms of Western origin,22 a class of words in which the accent is normally attributed according to the general, default principles that govern Japanese accentuation, establishes that vowel-initial words are less fre­ quently accented on the initial mora than consonant-initial words, in a statistically significant manner: 52% of #V- words are initially accented, as against 70% of #CV- words, all other things being equal. This shows that a constraint preventing feet from starting with a deficient mora does exist, even if this constraint is not topranked in the hierarchy, which explains that onsetless initial vowels—which, as stated in section 6.3.3, stand in between truly full moras and truly deficient ones一 can still be found, especially at the beginning of words, a position which com­ monly allows exceptional phonological configurations to occur. While a number of issues certainly remain, which require additional empirical and theoretical investigation, I believe that the above general framework of analysis of the Japanese mora and foot is correct and that it provides a satisfactory account of the phonology of Japanese. The role played by *F [m in the phonology of Japanese will be further exemplified through the case study of the accentuation of foreign toponyms in the following chapter (section 7.2.5).

6 .5 T H E P R O S O D I C W O R D A N D T H E U P P E R L E V E L S OF THE P R O SO D IC H IE R A R C H Y

The foot is dominated by the prosodic word ( が 語 or が 韻 律 語 )， which is the domain of accentual rules (see Chapter 7) and of a number of phonotactic and morpho-phonological rules or constraints such as h lemtion (section 3.7), non co­ occurrence of voiced obstruents (section 4.1.1), re n d a k u (section 4.2). In Japa­ nese, the prosodic word corresponds to a lexical word with its Satellites*, i.e. the

22

This list comes from one of the appendices of NHK (1998).

J

T H E P R O S O D IC W O R D

175

enclitic particles which may follow it. In some cases, it also contains a prefix such as 0- or go- (both honorific markers). There is no consensus as to the number and nature of the prosodic units above the prosodic word in the literature. The most widespread view, which we will follow in this book, posits two major categories between the prosodic word and the utterance: the minor phonological phrase and the major phonological phrase (McCawley, 1968; Selkirk and Tateishi, 1988; Kubozono, 1993b) also known respectively as accentual phrase and intermediate phrase (Pierrehumbert and Beckman, 1988) or the accentual phrase and the intonation phrase (Venditti et al., 2009). If, as this book claims, Japanese does not have phonological syllables, there is no need to recognize the existence of a syllabic level in its prosodic hierarchy. Instead, the mora constitutes a prosodic constituent in its own right directly linked to the foot, which has the full capacity to license segments. Accordingly, the prosodic hierarchy of Japanese may be represented as follows. (26)

Japanese prosodic hierarchy Utterance I Major phonological phrase (/ intermediate phrase / intonation phrase) I Minor phonological phrase (/ accentual phrase) l Prosodic word

I Foot l Mora However, some scholars posit only one corresponding category, the phonolog­ ical phrase, which covers the two subtypes of phonological phrases (Labrune, 2006; Ito and Mester, 2008). The minor phonological phrase ア ク セ ン ト 句 ） generally contains two prosodic words representing an [Adj + Noun + Particle] phrase, such as oishii gohan ga 4delicious rice + Subject particle,, or [Noun no Noun] *Noun of Noun5, in a phrase like Atsuko no gohan 4Atsuko's rice*. It has at most one pitch accent (one HL pitch change, see Chapter 7). The major phonological phrase (chd a h 此 /z如-たw 長 ア ク セ ン ト 句 ） may contain two minor phrases， for instance Atsuko no oishii gohan ga 4Atsuko^ delicious rice + Subject\ It is the domain

176

P R O S O D IC U N I T S

of the application of catathesis, or downstep (Poser, 1984; Pierrehumbert and Beckman, 1988). The utterance (b u n s e tsu is the domain of declination and of final raising or lowering, which may, for instance, differentiate questions from statements. Exemplifications of how intonation operates at the levels of the minor and major phonological phrases will be provided in the next chapter (sections 7.1.5 and 7.4), after the accentual system has been introduced.

6.6 S U M M A R Y A N D C O N C L U D I N G R E M A R K S The mass of facts examined throughout this chapter shows that the mora, a rhythmic and temporal unit of segment grouping, and the foot, a domain of mora grouping and organization, are sufficient for the understanding and analysis of Japanese phonol­ ogy at the lowest levels of prosodic organization. Two types of moras have been distinguished: regular moras, which are ideally made up of a consonant + a full vowel, and deficient moras, which lack one of the two full C or V elements in their prototypical shape. However, the difference between full and deficient moras is gradual, some moras being 4more' deficient than others, which accounts for the fact that some deficient moras sometimes behave like regular ones, whereas others, most typically /Q/ for instance, are always treated as deficient. The main advantage of the approach retained here is that it enables us to capture under the same phonological category a set of objects (namely onsetless vowels, epenthetic vowels, voiceless vowels, the mora nasal, the first part of a geminate, and the second part of a long vowel) which share a number of characteristics in Japanese phonology, but that a syllabic analysis fails to capture as similar entities. In the present approach, all normally syllable-linked phenom­ ena, and, in particular, references to the heavy syllable, are replaced by references to the foot and/or mora. We shall see in the next chapter how this approach can help provide a better account of some classical issues of Japanese phonology, through the formal analysis of loanword accentuation and compound word accentuation, two problems which have been claimed by the proponents of the syllabic analysis to prove the relevance and necessity of the syllable. The proposal that Tokyo Japanese makes no use of syllables contrasts sharply with the dominant current in mainstream phonology, which assumes that the syllable is not an optional unit in human languages but a universal constituent whose existence cannot be called into question.23 However, it should be 23 But note that a small number of scholars have questioned the universality of the syllable, for instance Kohler (1966), Hyman (2003 [1985]), and Auer (1994). Hyman (2003 [1985]) claims that the syllable is not a universal constituent but a language-particular construct built out of weight units

SU M M A R Y A N D C O N C L U D IN G R EM A RK S

177

emphasized that this is in accordance with the traditional analysis of the Japanese k o k u g o g a k u school of thought, which recognizes only what corresponds to the mora for the analysis of Japanese, with a distinction between autonomous and special moras.

(which correspond to moras). According to him, some languages simply do not construct syllables. See Labrune (2012)， for a more developed discussion.

7

ACCENT

Because of its complexity and rich phenomenology, as well as the typological variety exhibited across dialects, the issue of the Japanese accent ぶ如アク We will begin this chapter with a presentation of the general principles of the Tokyo Japanese accent (section 7.1), before examining in turn (sections 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4), the question of simplex words accentuation, compound words accentu­ ation, and that of the phonological phrase. In section 7.5, we will broaden our perspective in order to get a glimpse at individual and dialectal variation. Section 7.6 will allow us to reflect on the nature of the Japanese accent from a typological point of view. It will be followed, in section 7.7, by a review of the various accent studies which have been carried out in Japan and in the West from the Edo period until the present time. The study of the Tokyo Japanese accentual system occupies a particular position within theoretical phonology because this original prosodic system provides an interesting and challenging ground for the testing of prosodic models which have often been elaborated for ‘stress’ languages like English or ‘tone’ languages like Chinese, i.e. prosodic systems seemingly quite different from that of Japanese. Such testing is thus all the more invaluable to judge the validity of theoretical principles because the Japanese accent system is without question among the best-documented in the world. Moreover, and this is, in my view, a crucial point, rare enough in the field of linguistics outside non-Indo-European languages to be worth mentioning, the descriptions of Japanese that are available are, in their majority, by linguists working on their own native tongue within a variety of frameworks, including a largely indigenous approach. It might have been necessary to begin a chapter devoted to the Japanese accent system by a reflection on what an accent language is, and on how it should be defined in contrast with stress and tone languages. However, for clarity of exposition, this discussion is postponed until section 7.6, after the presentation of the details of the so-called Japanese ‘accent’ have been introduced， but some readers might prefer to read section 7.6 first.

G E N E R A L P R IN C IP L E S O F T O K Y O J A P A N E S E A C C E N T U A T I O N

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7 .1 G E N E R A L P R I N C I P L E S O F T O K Y O J A P A N E S E ACCENTUATION

7.1.1 Basic mechanisms The accent of Tokyo Japanese consists of a distinctive lexical pitch accent (sometimes called musical accent). It is marked phonetically by the change from a high-pitched mora (noted H henceforth) to a low-pitched mora (L). The last mora of the word carrying the H tone before the drop towards L is regarded as the accented mora of the word, its prosodic peak, or accent kernel (akusento-kaku

アクセント核). The lexicon is divided into tonic words (accented type, た/Zzmたw -A /h 起 伏 式 ） and atonic words (unaccented type, heiban-shiki A tonic word contains an HL sequence (in other words, a pitch drop), an atonic word does not. In this book, accented moras appear in bold characters while unaccented words are followed1 by the symbol °. In Standard Japanese, there exists in theory for any given word, n + 1 accent possibilities, n being equal to the number of full moras of the word. Thus, for a three-mora word having a CVCVCV structure, the following four prosodic patterns are all possible at the lexical level: ( 1 ) Accent possibilities for three-mora words CVCVCV namida ‘tear’ CVCVCV kokoro ‘heart， CVCVCV kagami 'mirror CVCVCV0 (atonic) sakura 。 ‘cherry tree’ In Japanese terminology, the namida type, with initial accent, is known as ロ如maぬ /:a -供如 ‘high head pattern’ （ 頭 咼 型 )， the た0 如 /79 type， with internal accent， is a ぬんuikakui] > hukaku [ 4>ui'kakui] ‘deeply’ kisha ['kipa] > kisha [ki'^a] 4train* aidokusha [aido'kuipa] > aidokusha [ai'dokuipa] ‘regular reader’ c. Accent shift due to the presence of a single vowel (obligatory or optional shift, depending on vowel quality (?); variation is frequently observed) Expected pattern Actual or alternative pattern *keizai-ryoku keizai-ryoku Economic power’ > *kaetta kaetta > ‘returned’ ^donau-gawa donau-gawa ‘the Danube’ > kangaeru kangaeru > ‘to think’ anaunsu anaunsu > {announce} As we shall see in the following pages, extra-phonological factors of semantic, lexical, syntactic, etymological, or morphological nature interact with purely pho­ nological mechanisms in order to determine accent location, to say nothing of sociolinguistic variation, in particular dialectal, which will be discussed in section 7.5.

7.1.5 An overview o f two theoretical treatments o f the Japanese accent At this point I introduce two outstanding formal treatments of the Japanese accent. Both have exerted important influence on subsequent accentual studies. The first was proposed by Haraguchi (1977), the second by Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988). (a) Haraguchi (1977) Haraguchi Shosuke has presented a formal treatment of the Japanese accent within the framework of autosegmental phonology (Goldsmith, 1976) which has exerted unquestionable influence both on the development of autosegmental theory and on the comprehension of the Japanese accent as a whole. Autosegmental phonology assumes pitch accent to be a tone mark located on a separate tier, and that it is realized on the surface when associated with some tone-bearing unit such as the syllable or the mora. What we have thus far called ‘accent’ is assumed to be the result of the association of a HL melody to a specific tone-bearing unit within the word, lexically specified in the case of nouns. In tonic words, the accented mora is associated with the H tone of the HL melody, while the low tone remains unassociated. Atonic words are seen as lexically unspecified. In tonic words, there exists, at the lexical level, one mora marked as accented. It is this mora which is associated with the H of the melody, followed by the L

I9 〇

ACCENT

which remains unassociated. The other moras are not specified as H or L. If the word is atonic, i.e. not specified as accented in the lexicon, a default HL melody will be associated with the last mora of the word, as in the miyako0 example below. (5)

Lexical representation of words within the autosegmental framework (Haraguchi 1977)3 inochi kokoro

HL ‘life’

atama

HL ‘heart’

miyako0

atama-ga

HL HL HL ‘head’ ‘capital’ ‘head + Subject，

miyako-ga°

HL ‘capital + Subject’

A series of rules and association conventions, the 4tone association conventions’， the ‘initial lowering rule’， and the ‘contour tone simplification rule’ （of which I shall leave aside the detailed presentation) applies, so that in the end all surface vowels are associated with an H or L tone, as shown below. (6)

Surface representation after the application of the tone association conven­ tions, the initial lowering rule, and the contour tone simplification rule inochi

kokoro

atama

miyako0

H L ‘life’

L H L ‘heart，

L H L H ‘head， ‘capital’

atama-ga

miyako-ga°

L H L H L ‘capital + Subject ， ‘head + Subject’

Haraguchi's assumption is that at the surface level, all moras receive an H or L specification. (b) Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988) Janet Pierrehumbert and Mary Beckman have proposed an analysis in which the Japanese accent is taken as a tonal melody associated with a mora at the lexical level. Their work follows the laboratory phonology approach, which consists in exploring, with experimental tools, the relationship between the phonetic reali­ zation and the phonological representation. It is both theoretically and model-

3 Following the common practice of autosegmental phonology, Haraguchi uses a star to denote the vowels carrying the accent. For convenience sake, we shall continue to mark the accented moras in bold characters, and to add the symbol ° to unaccented words.

L

J

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF TOKYO JAPANESE ACCENTUATION

191

oriented. The book published in 1988 aims at describing the surface tonal patterns of Japanese by identifying the phonetic mechanisms that control the interpreta­ tion of phonological representations, in other words, it aims to uncover the phonetic rules that govern the surface tonal realization of utterances. It is not directly a study about the lexical accent but a study on the tonal, in the sense of ‘intonational’ structure. Their purpose is ‘to develop a theoretically well-defined and empirically motivated system of surface representation, in order to derive the quantitative characteristics of the FO contour*. Accordingly, their study is to be considered as a theory of the interaction between word accent and prosodic structures of a higher level. The experiments thus shed new light on the status and nature of the lexical accent because, in a language such as Japanese, the lexical accents constitute by and large the representational input to which the phonetic rules that interest Pierrehumbert and Beckman are supposed to apply. Pierrehumbert and Beckman call into question Haraguchi's analysis based on the following two theoretical postulates (see above). First, accent is conceived and represented as a mark associated with a vowel within the word. This mark is later reinterpreted as an HL melody through the application of rules. Second, all vowels are linked to a tonal specification at the surface level. Pierrehumbert and Beckman draw a distinction between three types of tones, based on the level of the prosodic hierarchy at which the tones operate. At the lexical level, there is first an accent tone which consists of an HL melody. The H tone is phonologically associated with the accented mora of the word, in the spirit of Haraguchi’s model. At the level of the accentual phrase (also known as minor phrase or phonologi­ cal phrase, see Chapter 6) such as akai seetaa wa (4recT + Sweater* + Topic), there is, on the one hand, an isolated H tone (phrasal H), which is inserted and linked with the second mora, except if the phrase starts with an initial-accented lexeme. On the other hand, we have a boundary tone L%, which is inserted at the end of each phrase. The accentual phrase is thus delimitated by an H associated with the second mora of the word and an L% in final position. Finally, at the utterance level, one has an L% boundary tone, inserted at the beginning of the phrase as a whole. It will be ‘strong’ and associated or ‘weak’ and unassociated, depending on whether the word starts with a light or heavy initial ‘syllable’ （ in Pierrehumbert and Beckman’s model) or on whether the second mora is special (in our model). In this model, tone spreading is rejected, so that no tones other than those that are described here are claimed to exist in the surface phonological representations of utterances of Tokyo Japanese. The result is that there are fewer tones than tone-bearing units. Accentual phrases are thus unspecified for tone even at the surface level, as represented in (7). The main innovation of this model, in comparison with a majority of the preceding analyses, lies in the fact that

192

ACCENT

Japanese is treated as a tone language (but note that the tonal perspective goes back to Poser, 1984) and, especially, that an explicit formal distinction is made between tones assigned at the lexical level (HL) and those assigned at the level of the accentual phrase (H and L%) and at the level of the utterance (L%). Such a distinction between word level and phrase level accent assignment was already made by the Japanese phonetician Kawakami (1957) who analyses the initial HL melody as resorting to the accentual phrase ( 句 た m) rather than to the lexical accent in the strict sense. (7)

Representation of surface tone patterns for the words yamazakura, kageboushi, toumorokoshi, moushikomi0, and murasakuro0 in isolation (adapted from Pierrehumbert and Beckman, 1988:14) yamazakura

L°/〇

'wild cherry’

L°/〇

H HL

kageboushi

L%

HL

(shadow’

L°/o

toumorokoshi

L%

H HL

L%

moushikomi0

L%

H

H

‘propose’

L°/〇

murasakuro0

L%

corn

‘purple’

L°/〇

Pierrehumbert and Beckman’s hypothesis in favour of tonal underspecification is based on robust phonetic experimental data, showing in particular that the FO contour over the prosodic units following the phrasal H in unaccented phrases

A C C E N T O F S IM P L E X W O R D S

193

(for example moushikomi0 or murasakiiro0) is not identical to that occurring after a lexical HL. The most plausible explanation for this fact is thus that there are, at the surface phonological level, fewer tones than tone-bearing units likely to condition the slope of the FO contour. In the absence of tonal specifications, phonetic mechanisms determine the transitions between the phrasal H on the second mora and the final L%.

7.2 ACCENT OF SIMPLEX WORDS Japanese words almost always occur with affixes: enclitic particles such as case markers in the case of nouns, auxiliaries or enclitic particles in the case of verbs and adjectives. However, in so far as these affixes are deprived of lexical autonomy, formations built upon single words consisting of a Noun + one or several enclitics, or a Verb/Adj + one or several auxiliaries or enclitics, constitute single prosodic words (or, extended word structure in the terms of Higurashi, 1983). We thus call 'simplex word, any autonomous linguistic form that pos­ sesses at most one accent peak and that is not decomposable into smaller elements likely to have lexical autonomy. Following this definition, yama-ga 'mountain + Subject5, yama-bakari or yama-bakari 'only the mountain,, kaerimasu 4to return + Polite, are simplex words, while yama-michi 'mountain lane5 or kaeri-tsuku 4to return \ which have one accent peak but are made up of two autonomous elements (yama, michi°, kaeru, tsuku), are considered as compounds.

72.1 Yamato nouns All the accent possibilities described above (in 3a and b) are attested for simplex Yamato nouns. A Yamato noun may be tonic or atonic. If it is tonic, any of its full moras has the ability to carry the accent kernel. Examples are presented in Table 7.2, where each noun is followed by the accentually neutral particle ga (subject marker). However, not all particles are accentually neutral like ga. Some have the ability to modify the position of the lexical accent of the preceding noun by way of complex mechanisms, as the examples in Table 7.3 illustrate. The term ‘particle’ is used to designate what is c a l l e d •( 助言司） in traditional Japanese grammar, a category that actually includes elements of various linguistic types (Japanese so-called particles belong to one of the following types: casual, adver­ bial, final, and connective). Two major types of particles need to be distinguished with respect to their accentual behaviour: dominant and recessive. Prosodically dominant particles,

194

ACCENT

Table 7.2. Accent of simplex Yamato nouns4 1 mora

2 moras

3 moras

4 moras

atonic nouns

し

H 'day5

LH-H hana-ga° ^nose*

LHH-H sakura-ga° *cherry tree*

LHHH-H tom odachi-ga° ^friend*

tonic nouns

H-L h i-g a ‘fire’

HL-L n e k o -g a ‘cat’

H l L-L k a r a su -g a *raven'

HLLL-L k o o m o r i-g a ‘bat’

LH-L h a n a -g a ‘flower’

LHH-L ka g a m i-g a ‘mirror，

LHHH-L im o u to -g a 4younger sister*

LHL-L k o k o r o -g a ‘heart，

LHLL-L ku d a m o n o -g a ‘fruit’ LHHL-L m izu u m i-g a ‘lake ，

like dake° 'only5 or bakari 'solely5, may impose their own accent pattern on the noun phrase, while recessive particles, like yori tfrom, and shika0 ^nly*, do not. The presence of a dominant particle causes the accent of the noun to be deleted, and the accent pattern of the particle determines the accent pattern of the phrase, including cases where the particle is atonic, as in the example with dake°. The accent of recessive particles only shows up in the surface when the preceding noun is unaccented. Otherwise it is deleted and only the noun's accent is realized on the surface as with yori. Note that some particles are pre-accenting, that is, they cause the appearance of an accent on the last mora of the noun which precedes them, for instance shika. The particle ga is prosodically inert: the noun to which it is attached always keeps its inherent accent. All the monomoraic particles but for no and ne belong to this class, as well as some bimoraic particles such as kara° 1

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JJWlvq—vll

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J d JO09JJ9 P T a u 933y •£ a 31BH S3 P

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ぶd mlmswlfl{s_vuml .q 丨 owljys DlWlf.

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garasu-mado

'glass window*

>

karasu-mugi

‘oats’

Most of the nouns which maintain the accent in its onginal location when used as a C2 are initially accented. The most frequent are: kumo (-gumo) 8 4cloud 狀た〇 猫 ‘cat’ ， 雨 4rain’ ， (-ゾ/rw) 汁 ‘juice’ ，/im狀 （-わ 船 ‘boat’ ，た似“ 似 ）傘 4umbrella’，o加’ 帯 ‘belt’，灸 况 （ -取^ ) 声 ‘voice’，//imたo 婿 ‘son-in-law’， む《/7/(- ： 31//7^)鶴 ‘〇*〇116’，//1“琴/ 麦 ‘〜116狂1’，/?«^ 目1』 ‘front’. Some nouns of

A CCEN T O F CO M PO U N D W ORDS

219

Western origin behave in the same manner, for example g 似 w ガ ス ‘gaz’，/ w’zg ピ ザ ‘pizza’， as well as the Sino-Japanese derivative morpheme -5/1Mが •主 義 kami-hikouki ‘paper plane’ (‘paper’ + ‘plane ’） waka + murasaki > waka-murasaki ‘light purple’ (‘young， + ‘purple ’）

221

A C CEN T O F C O M PO U N D W ORDS

enjin + sutoppu

> enjin-sutoppu

‘stalling of a motor’

({engine} + {stop}) e. Long C2 with a penultimate accent hidari0 + uchiwa > hidari-uchiwa/ (‘left’ + ‘fan ’） hidari-uchiwa

yude° + tamago (‘boil， + ‘egg ， ）

onna + kokoro / kokoro

> yude-tamago!

‘to live in ease’

‘boiled egg’

yude-tamago > onna-gokoro

‘woman’s heart，

(‘woman’ + ‘heart’）

denki + nokogiri / nokogiri13 > denki-nokogiri

'power saw5

(‘electricity’ + saw ’） The examples presented in (34e) are actually very debatable. This is because the majority of compounds cited in the literature in order to exemplify the cases at hand (for example Tanaka, 2001) concern the following categories: (i) their C2 is a noun with two possible accent patterns such as nokogiri / nokogiri 'saw5, kamisori / kamisori 'razor% namekuji / namekuji0 *slug\ hoobeni / hoobeni0 ‘cheek rouge ’，kokoro / kokoro 4h e a r t ( ii) their C2 is a noun which must be analysed as deverbal, with an original final accent which has undergone an accentual shift due to the NADM principle (machigae > machigae ^rror5, kangae > kangae ‘thought，）； (iii) the compound admits two accent patterns (hidari0 + uchiwa > hidari-uchiwa / hidari-uchiwa 4to live at ease5). Non-ambiguous examples of compounds which illustrate the fate of C2?s with a penultimate accent are actually hard to find. An additional and secondary factor conditions accent placement: the sonority of vowels. Tanaka (2008:157ff.) demonstrates that vowel sonority plays a role in the attribution of the accent when the C2 is four mora long (except if it is of Western origin and if the third mora of the C2 is a deficient mora). So, when the first vowel in the C2 has a lower degree of sonority than the second vowel, the compound is more frequently accented on the antepenultimate mora than on the pre-antepenultimate one. The two following sets of examples illustrate this phenomenon:

13 As already stated, kokoro and nokogiri also admit final accentuation {kokoro, nokogiri). Under this condition, the compounds onna-gokoro and denki-nokogiri can be regarded as resorting to the cases examined in (34c).

ACCENT

222

(35) Correlation between vowel sonority and accent (Tanaka, 2008) a. VI is higher in sonority than V2 in C2 ( 一 regularly accented compound) a> o oka° + yadokari0 > oka-yadokari ‘land hermit crab’ e > i kokusan0 + benibana0 > kokusan'safflower produced benibana in Japan1 b. VI is lower in sonority than V2 in C2 ( — irregularly accented compound) i < o ie + sniroari0 > ie-shiroari ‘house termite’ e < a reitou0 + edamame0> reitou-edamame 'frozen green soybeans* (iii) Extra-long C2 When the C2 is five mora long or longer, the rules are considerably simpler. The accent of the second member is preserved even when it is final. If it is atonic, the compound will also be. (36) shidonu + orinpikku ({Sydney} + {Olympic)) isoppu + monogatari ({Aesop} + ‘story’) chihou + saibansho (‘region’ + ‘tribunal’） minami。 + kariforunia。 (‘south’ + {California})

> shidonii-orinpikku

‘Sydney Olympic Games，

> isoppu- monogatari A esop's fablesT > chihou- saibansho

‘regional tribunal’

> minami-kariforunia0 'Southern California5

In the above pages, we have reviewed the accentuation of compound nouns. Although the phenomenology seems incredibly complex, the following general trends can be established: the number of exceptions to the accent rules decreases according to the length of the second component; the compound most generally carries the accent on the second member (except for some compounds with short C2); a final accent is generally avoided (except in extra-long compounds); a certain convergence in favour of the antepenultimate pattern can be observed, resulting either from the privileged maintenance of the onginal accent of C2, or from the attribution of a default accent. Finally, all things being equal, it seems that if the accent of C2 can be preserved in its original location in the compound, it will be, provided this does not infringe some of the other basic principles.

7.3.2 A constraint-based account o f compound noun accentuation Let us now move to the formal and theoretical analysis of the mechanisms reviewed above. We shall take as a starting point the work by Kubozono (1997) who presents an OT treatment of these data. After summarizing

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223

Kubozono's paper, which brings new light to this complex problem and has greatly contributed to its reconsideration, we will see what treatment we can propose of the same facts. As we have just seen, the length of C2 is traditionally regarded as the main parameter in order to determine the prosodic pattern of a compound. It is precisely to the issue of this length parameter that Kubozono (1995b, 1997) makes a first significant contribution, by proposing that the same principles apply to the accentuation of short and long C2 compounds, and that it is thus irrelevant to distinguish between these two classes. On this basis, the accent principles can be reformulated according to the following generalization: (3 7 )

K u b o z o n o ’s g e n e r a l i z a t i o n ( s l i g h t l y a d a p te d )

- A short or long C2 accent is parsed in compounds except when it is final. - If C2 is atonic or oxytonic, a default compound accent emerges on the rightmost non-final foot. - There exists a class of exceptions among the words whose C2 is short (equiva­ lent to a one- or two-mora foot). They yield unaccented compounds. However, as Kubozono observes, there exists in fact a second class of excep­ tions among short C2’s (the ‘Little Mermaid ’，川 type, see below). It will be noted moreover that Kubozono does not address the issue of compounds with an extra-long C2. They thus constitute, de facto, a special class with regard to his analysis. There is also, and this should not be forgotten, a whole list of words whose accent is idiosyncratic, as well as many cases of accentual variation. The distinction between short and long C25s being now irrelevant, only the deaccenting type must be specified as such lexically, and considered as exceptional. This contrasts with former analyses which consider (implicitly or explicitly) that there exist three different classes of short C25s. This descriptive simplification constitutes the first important contribution of this work: one now has a general case, which can be accounted for in a unified way, and a number of exceptions, which should be treated as such. The second important contribution lies in the theoretical treatment that is proposed, on the basis of this new formulation of the problem. This treatment will be summarized here. We shall then proceed to a reanalysis of the data, which, I believe, improves on that originally proposed, while being in accordance with the conception of the Japanese prosodic units and the role of the mora and the foot in the phonology of Japanese defended in the present book. —OT treatment: Kubozono (1997)’s analysis According to Kubozono, the principles highlighted in (37) can be accounted for by the interaction between a small number of constraints, defined as follows:

224

ACCENT

(38) Kubozono’s constraints (1997, adapted) OCP: No more than one prominence peak (i.e. word accent) is allowed in a single PrWd. P a r s e ( a c c e n t ): Parse the lexical accent of the C2 in compound nouns. N o n F in a l it y ( i i ): The head mora, i.e. the accented mora, is not final in PrWd. N o n F in a l it y ( q ): The head syllable, i.e. the accented syllable, is not final in PrWd. N o n F in a l it y (7t): The head foot, i.e. the accented foot, is not final in PrWd. E d g e m o st n e s s / A p e a k o f p r o m in e n c e l i e s at th e r ig h t e d g e o f th e R ig h t m o s t n e s s : Word. As pointed out by Kubozono, an essential aspect of his analysis lies in the fact that the N o n F in a l it y constraint is decomposed into three independent subparts: NoN FiN A LiTY (ji), N o n F in a l it y ( ct), and N o n F in a l it y ( tt). Recall, in con­ nection with this issue, that Kubozono is a scholar for whom the distinction between mora and syllable is held as essential in Japanese, and who regards the analysis of compound accentuation as a definite argument in favour of such a distinction. Kubozono assumes that the constraints OCP and NoNFiNALiTY(ji) are undomi­ nated. The hierarchy that he proposes is given in (39): (39) Constraints hierarchy (Kubozono, 1997, adapted) O CP, N

o n F in a l it y ( | x, ct)

> >

P a r se (a c c e n t ) > >

N

o n F in a l it y

( tt) »

E d g e m o st n e s s

The undominated constraint OCP will be omitted in the following discussion and tableaux. The following four tableaux illustrate the action of the constraints and their hierarchy according to Kubozono’s analysis. Only the candidates that respect the constraint OCP appear here. The examples we will consider are the following (we continue to use our notation conventions throughout): (40) perusha + neko > perusha-neko nebada + shuu > nebada-shuu

abare。 + uma > abare-uma kabuto + mushi° > kabuto-mushi

(accent is kept in C2) (C2 is pre-accenting) (C2 is oxytonic and pre-accenting) (C2 is atonic and pre-accenting)

225

A C CEN T O F C O M PO U N D W ORDS

(41) perusha + neko > perusha-neko *Persian cat5 /p e r u sy a /+ /n e k o /

^

N o n F (ド， a)

P arseA

N

氺

a. p e r u sh a )-(n e k o )

*!

b. p e r u sh a )-(n e k o ) c . p e r u sh a )-(n e k o )

o n F ( tt)

a # CJCT

氺

|i，a !

E d g e m o st

#

*

In (41), the first candidate, perusha-neko is optimal because it maintains the non-final accent of neko, thus respecting the higher-ranked constraints N onFinality (|i, a) and ParseA ccent. The following tableau illustrates the case where the C2 is assumed by Kubozono to be a monosyllable. (42) nebada + shuu > nebada-shuu 4the State of Nevada*

ぼ

/nebada/+/syuu/

N onF(|i , a)

a. nebada)-(shuu)

a !

ParseA

N onF(tt)

Edgemost

*

b. nebada)-(shuu)

*

a #

c. nebada)-(shuu)

*

a a a #!

Here， candidate a. cannot win because it violates NoNFiNAUTY(a). It is thus candidate b. which, although violating ParseA ccent, is optimal because it incurs fewer violations to edgemostness than c. In tableau (43), C2 uma is bimoraic (as well as bisyllabic in Kubozono5s terms). Once again, the candidate with an antepenultimate accent, in c., emerges as victorious. (43) abare° + uma > abare-uma 'restive horse5 /a b a r e ° /+ /u m a /

N o n F ( |i , a )

a. a b a r e ) -( u m a )

| I ，CT !

b . a b a r e ) -( u m a ) 逆

c.

a b a r e )-(u m a )

Pa rseA

N

o n F ( tt)

E d g e m o st

* * *

*!

CT# CJCT #

Finally, we consider the case where the C2 is atonic, with no lexical accent to parse.

226

ACCENT

(44) kabuto + mushi° > kabuto-mushi 4beetle? /kabuto/+/musi°/

N onF(|i , ct)

a. kabuto)-(mushi)

屮

b. kabuto)-(mushi) ^ c. kabuto)-(mushi) d. kabuto)-(mushi)

!

P a rseA

N 〇nF(7T)

E d g e m o st

* *!

a # CTCT# a a cj a #!

Here too, the candidate with an antepenultimate accent, kabuto-mushi in c., is selected. Apart from the class of de-accenting nouns, excluded from the scope of the analysis from the beginning because they are regarded as marked exceptions in the lexicon, and that of extra-long compounds which are not discussed in the article, this treatment generates two types of exceptions. The first type consists of the so-called 'Little Mermaid5 pattern (as exemplified by ningyo + hime > ningyo-hime 'Little Mermaid' or yoyaku0 + seki > yoyaku-seki 'reserved seat5), which are words in which the initial accent of the C2 is not faithfully parsed, contrary to neko in perusha-neko. The second type includes cases ending with a supposedly bimoraic Syllable*, such as sunakku + baa > sunakku-baa ^nack-bar9 or eiga° + fan > eiga-fan 'movie fa n \ which preserve the accent of C2 on the final putative 4syllable \ in violation of N o n F in a l it y ( ct), and thus contradict the analysis proposed for nebada-shuu. We will not enter the details of the extensions that Kubozono gives to his analysis in order to provide an account of these exceptions and of the strong inter-speaker variation observed in the accent pattern of some compounds. We shall merely observe that he analyses these exceptions as resulting from a ‘minimal deviation’ from his standard constraint hierarchy. This is a classic approach to exception and variation in OT. However, although such an approach correctly succeeds in formalizing the exceptional character of the words under consideration, it rails to explain why it should be so. I claim that a better analysis of these data can be proposed. It remains based on the descriptive generalization of Kubozono, but baa and fan no longer appear as exceptions. This reanalysis builds on the conception of the Japanese lower prosodic units as consisting only of the mora and foot, with no reference to the syllable, presented in Chapter 6.

ACCENT OF COMPOUND WORDS

227

- My analysis As mentioned above, Kubozono’s analysis rests on the assumption that the difference between mora and syllable is relevant in Japanese. It is precisely this assumption that we call into question. The explanation that I propose in the following lines rests on the distinction between the mora and the foot. I claim, on the one hand, that a simpler and more coherent account can be provided, and, on the other hand, that we can get rid of one class of exceptions, the sunakku-baa and eiga-fan type. Indeed, these words, which pose a problem in the original analysis, turn out to be perfectly regular in our approach. The reason why Kubozono calls upon the constraint N onFinality( ct) is because it is essential in the analysis to account for one-character Sino-Japanese morphemes ending in a deficient mora like sみmm 州 ， in わ When they occur as the second constituent of a compound, these morphemes require an accent to be put on the last mora of the first component: they thus do not preserve their apparent lexical accent after compounding, contrary to the neko type. For Kubozono, as seen before, the difference between shuu and neko lies in the fact that shuu is a bimoraic monosyllable while neko is a bimoraic bisyllable. The behaviour of the words fan or baa which, despite the fact that they are also bimoraic monosyllables like shuu, behave like neko rather than like shuu in keeping their accent on the moras fa and ba in compounding (sunakku-baa, eiga-fan) leads Kubozono to treat them as exceptions. However, one can assume that it is not the number of moras or syllables that is at stake here but some other kind of difference. In reality, the difference between the shuu type and the baa type is to be captured at some other level.I assume that there exists an accentual difference at the underlying level between these two lexemes. Morphemes like shuu are accented on their last mora at the lexical level: /syuR/ (see also sections 6.2.4 and 7.3.6 for additional evidence), whereas baa or fan are accented on the first one: /baR/, /faN/. One thus distinguishes, at the lexical level, the two following types for words consisting of one foot whose second mora is dencient (that is, which consist in a heavy syllable following Kubozono’s analysis): (45) Underlyingly final accent a. Sino-Japanese morphemes /syuR/ Mww 州 ‘state ’ /tyuR/ c/zmw 中 ‘middle’ /toR/ tou 党 ‘party’ /hoN/ 本 4book, /yoR/>Y)M 用 ‘use’ /ryuR/ び wm 流 ‘stream， etc. b. Western morphemes /piN/ pin (pin) /maN/ man {man}

/paN/ pan etc.

{pao}

228

ACCENT

(46) Underlyingly initial accent (Western morphemes) /baR/ baa {bar} /faN/fan {fan} /kiR/ た" {key j etc. Morphemes in (46) are all of relatively recent Western origin. Morphemes in (45) are mostly Sino-Japanese, but it is worth noting that they also include a small number of ancient loans from Western languages, such as ‘pin’，/wiA? ‘bread’, or man tman,. Interestingly, there exist some Western words like kaa 'car* or tii 4tea’ that behave like the words in (45) or (46) depending on speakers. One thus has patorooru-kaa or patorooru-kaa {patrol car}, and remon-tii or remon-tii {lemon tea}. Noteworthy enough, these words obviously belong to a class of loans which are neither very old nor very recent. So, the phonological difference in the localization of the lexical accent that we see actually reflects a difference in the dating of the borrowing, be it from Chinese or from a Western language. Older loans generally bear an underiymgly final accent while more recent ones tend to bear an underlyingly initial accent. Words such as kaa or tii represent an intermediate stage, which is why they allow accentual variation in compounding. The surface pattern shuu corresponding to the underlying form /syuR/ and that of the other words of the same class is accounted for by the action of the NADM principle, which prohibits accentuation of deficient moras (see section 6.3.2). Note that PeakP rominence, the constraint of which the NADM principle is a reformulation (see section 6.3.2) is needed to correctly derive the output form of monographemic Sino-Japanese morphemes finishing with a deficient mora, but since it is not directly active here, it will not be mentioned in the tableaux below. As seen in section 7.2.3, it is thus not because it consists of a ‘heavy syllable’ that shuu behaves differently from neko in compounding but because it actually possesses a final accent at the input level, exactly like uma, examined in (43). This question being set, the NoNFiNALiTY(a) constraint proposed by Kubozono is no longer necessary. I thus propose to revise the list of constraints as follows:47 (47)

〇CP:

No more than one accent peak in PrWd. FaithIO(Head A ccent): The accent kernel of the head noun occupies the same position in the input and in the output. N onFinauty([x): The accented mora must not be final. N onFinality(7t): The accented foot must not be final. A lignR ight: The accent lies at the right edge of the word.

Except for N onFinality( cj)，which has now become superfluous, the constraints proposed here are essentially the same as those introduced by Kubozono (1997). We adopt the constraint FaithIO(HeadA ccent) in replacement

229

ACCENT OF COMPOUND WORDS

of ParseA ccent, for the sake of clarity. F aithIO(HeadA ccent) requires that the accent occupy exactly the same position in the output as in the input. Moreover, A lignRight, already used for the analysis of the default accent in Western loans in section 7.2.5, henceforth replaces Edgemostness/R ightmostness. The analysis by Kubozono (1997) does not address the issue of compounds with a long C2. This class of compounds was the subject o f a previous work by the same author (Kubozono, 1995b), but the treatment suggested for com­ pound nouns with long C2 in the 1995 paper is independent of the one proposed for short C2 in 1997. This is why it is essential to look for a unified approach, which can account for the two types: compounds with a short C2 and compounds with a long C2. I will retain from the 1995 paper the constraint given in (48). I shall also assume that this constraint is at work both for long and short C2 compounds: (48)

A lignCA: Align the accent with the boundary between C l and C2.

A l i g n C A stipulates that the accent is aligned with the boundary between Cl and C2, either on the last mora of C l or on the first mora of C2. In addition, I propose that a constraint imposing the realization of an accent in the compound, the A ccent constraint, be ranked above all the other constraints. Due to the action of this constraint, atonic candidates are systematically elimi­ nated. Like Kubozono, I consider that atonic compound nouns constitute a closed word class, limited to forms containing a short C2, which it is preferable to treat as exceptional.

(49) A ccent:

Compounds must have an accent.

In the following tableaux, the A ccent constraint does not figure, nor do the atonic candidates that fatally violate it. Mutatis mutandis, the hierarchy in (50) remains that of Kubozono, but without the N onFinality( q ) constraint. Note that it is also fully compatible with our analysis of foreign place names developed in section 7.2.5. (50)

Final constraint hierarchy

A ccent > > A lignRight

N onF(^) > >

FaithIO(A) > >

N onF(tt) > >

A lignCA > >

Let us now examine how five of the examples presented earlier in this chapter, that is, perusha-neko, abare-uma, kabuto-mushi, nebada-shuu, and sunakku-baa, can be handled following this new proposal. Let us start with perusha-neko, abare-uma, and kabuto-mushi.

23〇

ACCENT

(51 ) ver usha + neko > perusha-neko 4Persian cat* /perusya/+/neko/

N onF(|i )

FaithIO(A)

N〇nF(7T) A lignCA A lignR *

^ a. perusha)-(neko) b. perusha)-(neko) *!

氺

c. perusha)-(neko)

*!

*

* * 氺 氺

(52) abare° + uma > abare-uma restive horse? /abare0/ + /uma/ a. abare)-(uma)

NonF(^i)

FaithIO(A)

N onF(tt) A lignCA A lignR *

*!

b. abare)-(uma)

*

使c. abare)-(uma)

*

* *

*!

**

(53) kabuto + mushi° > kabuto-mushi 'beetle* /kabuto/ + /musi°/

N onF(|i ) FaithIO(A) N onF(tt) A lignCA A lignR

a. kabuto)-(mushi) b. kabuto)-(mushi) c. kabuto)-(mushi) ^ d. kabuto)-(mushi)

*! *!

* *!

氺氺氺氺

* * **

In each of the three cases above, the expected form is correctly selected. These examples do not pose any particular problem because they do not include a prosodic unit likely to be analysed as a heavy syllable. In this respect, the following example, nebada-shuu, appears as crucial. As we have stated, the morpheme shuu carries an initial accent at the surface level, but we now assume that it actually contains an accent on its final mora at the lexical level, which constitutes the input of tableau (54).

L

231

A CCEN T O F CO M PO U N D W ORDS

(54)

nebada

+ shuu (/syuR/) >

/nebada/ + /syuR/

N o n F (^ )

a. nebada)-(shuu) b. nebada)-(shuu) 史

n e b a d a -s h u u

4the State of Nevada5

F a it h I O ( A )

N o n F ( tt)

*

*! *

*!

A l ig n C A

l ig n R

* *

*

c. nebada)-(shuu)

A

氺氺

The candidate in c. is victorious, even though it does not maintain the accent in its original position. It is actually non-optimal to maintain the final accent of the input, as candidate b. does, because this violates the higher-ranked constraint N〇 NHNALiTY(|i). The n e b a d a - s h u u case is actually identical to that of a b a r e - u m a in (52). Finally, let us see what happens with s u n a k k u - b a a (snack bar}, an example which is problematic in Kubozono^ analysis. Recall that, as seen above, the word b a a has its underlying accent on the initial mora b a in the present approach, contrary to shuu which has an underlyingly final accent: / b a R / v e r s u s /syuR/. (55)

su n a k k u + b a a > su n a k k u -b a a

/sunaQku/ + /baR/

N o n F (| i )

4snack-bar?

F a it h I O ( A )

N o n F (7 〇

A

*

^ a. sunakku)-(baa) b. sunakku)-(baa)

*!

c. sunakku)-(baa) *!

*

l ig n C A

A l ig n R

* **

*

*

The candidate in c. displays a fatal infringement to N o n F in a l it y (| i ), and is eliminated. So is b. which violates F a it h I O ( H e a d A c c e n t ). It is thus the form in a., whose non-final lexical accent is faithfully parsed, which emerges as optimal. The analysis proposed here has the advantage of getting rid of what appears, in Kubozono's analysis, as a class of exceptions. The accent pattern of b a a can now be distinguished from that of shuu. The former is accented on the initial mora underlyingly (/baR/), while the latter is on the final mora (/syuR/), hence the difference in their accentual behaviour when they undergo compounding.

ACCENT

232

There remains one type of lexical exception in the treatment I have proposed, as in Kubozono^, the 'Little Mermaid? case: n in g y o + h i m e yields n in g y o - h im e instead of * n i n g y o - h i m e , the expected output. As mentioned above, this type resorts to a closed class, and one should resign oneself to mark it as exceptional at the lexical level at the present state of research. One can go one step further and extend the analysis to the class of compounds containing a long C2, such as k o g a t a 0 + k a m e r a > k o g a t a - k a m e r a 'small camera\ s h i m a g u n i + k o n j o u > s h i m a g u n i - k o n j o u cinsularism,, y u k i + d a r u m a 0 > y u k i- d a r u m a 'snowman5, k a m i + h i k o u k i > k a m i - h i k o u k i 'paper plane', k u c h i ° + y a k u s o k u 0 > k u c h i- y a k u s o k u 'verbal prom ise\ n u k a + y o r o k o b i > n u k a - y o r o k o b i 'premature jo y 5, w a k a + m u r a s a k i > w a k a - m u r a s a k i 'light purple’ （see section 7.3.1). We can consider that the regular output for compounds with a long C2 is to preserve the accent in its original position except when it is final. In this case, or if the C2 is atonic, an accent is placed on the first mora of C2. We are only dealing here with cases that do not present any variation, be it in the accent of the compound or in that of the noun in C2 (we thus leave aside those examples likely to present more than one accentual possibility like h id a r i 0 + u c h i w a > h i d a r i- u c h i w a / h id a r i- u c h iw a , or d e n k i + n o k o g i r i l n o k o g i r i > d e n k i - n o k o g i r i , previously discussed in section 7.3.1). In the first example (tableau 56), the candidate k o g a t a - k a m e r a in a., in which the non-final accent of the trimoraic C2 k a m e r a is preserved in its position of origin, wins over all other candidates because those violate one or more than one of the four higher-ranked constraints. The same applies to the compound with a four-mora C2 in tableau (57), where it is the form in a. with an accent on the first mora of k o n j o u that is optimal. (56)

k o g a ta 0 + k a m e r a > k o g a ta -k a m e ra

/k o g a t a 。 / + / k a m e r a / ^

'small size camera?

N 〇N F (|i) F a it h I O ( A )

N

o n F ( tt)

A l ig n C A

A

l ig n R

**

a. k o g a t a ) - ( k a m e ) ( r a ) / (k a )(m e ra ) b. k o g a ta )-(k a m e )(r a ) c. k o g a ta )-(k a m e)(r a ) d. k o g a ta )-(k a )(m er a )

氺氺氺

*! *!

*

氺

氺

*1

*

氺

*

A CCEN T O F C O M PO U N D W ORDS

(57)

s h im a g u n i + k o n jo u > s h im a g u n i- k o n jo u

/simaguni/ + /konzyoR/

N

233

'insularism5

) F a it h I O ( A ) N 〇n F(7T) A l ig n C A A l ig n R

o n F ( |i

***

^ a. shimaguni)-(kon)(jou) b. shimaguni)-(kon)(jou)

*!

c. shimaguni)-(kon)(jou)

*!

氺氺**

*

*

氺

The following tableau exemplifies the case of a trimoraic C2 atonic in its independent form, in which there is thus no original accent to parse. (58)

/ y u k i / + /d a r u m a 0/ ^

4snowman,

y u k i + d a r u m a ° > y u k i- d a r u m a

N

o n F ( |i

) F a it h I O ( A ) N

o n F ( tt)

A

l ig n C A

A

l ig n R

氺氺

a. y u k i ) - ( d a r u ) ( m a ) / (d a )(r u m a )

*!

b. y u k i)-(d a r u )(m a )

c.

y u k i) - ( d a r u ) ( m a )

*

*

*!

*

*** I

d . y u k i) - ( d a r u ) ( m a )

The form y u k i- d a r u m a in a. will be selected. Its most serious competitors are b. and d., which also respect the three higher-ranked constraints. However, candidate b. fatally violates A l ig n C A , while d. presents one infraction more in comparison to a. for A l ig n R . In (59), C2 is a four-mora-long noun with an original antepenultimate accent. Here, candidate b. wins out because it is the only one that respects the three highest constraints, and particularly F a it h I O ( H e a d A c c e n t ), which both the can­ didates a. and c. violate. (59)

kam i

+

h ik o u k i > k a m i-h ik o u k i

/kami/ + /hikoRki/

N 〇NF(ji)

a. kami)-(hi)(kou)(ki)

'paper plane? F a it h I O ( A ) N

o n F ( tt)

A l ig n C A

***

*! *

^ b. kami)-(hi)(kou)(ki) c. kami)-(hi)(kou)(ki)

*!

d. kami)-(hi)(kou)(ki) *!

*

A l ig n R

** 氺氺氺氺

*

*

ACCENT

234

Turning now to (60), we can consider the case of a quadrimoraic atonic C2. The candidate in b., kuchi-yakusoku, is the best one, as expected. Its most serious competitors are the forms in a. and e. with an antepenultimate accent. Their elimination is due to the fact that the accent is too far from the C1-C2 boundary (infringement of A l ig n C A ) . The same applies to candidate d., which presents four infringements of A l ig n ( R ig h t ), whereas b. has only three. (60) kuchi° + yakusoku0 > kuchi-yakusoku 'verbal promise * /k u t i 。 / + /y a k u s o k u 。 /

N o n F (| i ) F a it h I O ( A ) N o n F ( tt) A

*!

a. k u c h i ) - ( y a k u ) ( s o k u ) ^

l ig n C A

A

l ig n

R

** ***

b. k u c h i)-(y a k u )(s o k u ) c . k u c h i) - ( y a k u ) ( s o k u )

*!

*

氺

氺 氺 氺 氺

d. k u c h i)-(y a k u )(s o k u ) e. k u c h i)-(y a )(k u s o )(k u )

*!

i

**

In the compound nuka + yorokobi in (61), the original accent of C2 cannot be maintained in the compound since that would involve fatal violation of N o n F in ALiTY(|i), which is higher in the hierarchy than F a it h I O ( H e a d A c c e n t ). The candidate in a. is thus excluded. The correct output must then be selected among the forms which infringe F a it h I O ( H e a d A c c e n t ). It is the low-ranked constraint A l ig n ( R ig h t ) that makes the difference between b. and e., allowing candidate b. to win over e., because, all other things being equal,b. has one violation less than e. with respect to A l ig n ( R ig h t ). (61) nuka +yorokobi > nuka-yorokobi 'premature joy*

^

/n u k a / + /y o r o k o b i/

N o n F (| i ) F a it h I O ( A )

N 〇n F(7T) A l ig n C A A

a. n u k a ) - ( y o r o ) ( k o b i )

*!

*

氺

*!

*

*

*!

**

b . n u k a ) - ( y o r o ) ( k o b i)

*

c . n u k a ;-(y o r o )(k o b i)

*

d. n u k a )-(y o r o )(k o b i)

*

e . n u k a )-(y o r o )(k o b i)

*

f. n u k a ) - ( y o ) ( r o k o ) ( b i )

*

l ig n R

氺 氺 氺 氺

*!

氺水

i

A CCEN T O F CO M PO U N D W ORDS

235

Tableau (62) exemplifies the case of a compound with a quadrimoraic C2 accented on the antepenultimate mora in its lexical form. One expects that the accent will be kept in this position, even after compounding. And indeed, this is what occurs. One of the forms in a., the only ones that respect F a it h I O (H e a d A c c e n t ) , is selected as the optimal candidate because all the other possible outputs present fatal violation of this constraint. (62) waka + murasaki > waka-murasaki Might purple? /w a k a / + /m u r a sa k i/ ^

N o n F (| i ) F a it h I O ( A )

N 〇n F(7T) A

l ig n C A

*

a. w a k a ) - ( m u r a ) ( s a k i )

A

l ig n R

**

/-(m u )(r a s a )(k i) b . w a k a ) - ( m u r a ) ( s a k i)

*»

c . w a k a ) - ( m u r a ) ( s a k i)

*!

d . w a k a ) - ( m u r a ) ( s a k i)

*!

氺氺氺

氺氺氺氺 *

*

*

In conclusion, it must be pointed out that the treatment proposed here presents a number of improvements. First, the recourse to the ambivalent and problematic constraint N o n F in a l it y ( jx, a ) is no longer necessary. Only N o n F i n ( ^ ) and N o n F in (7t) are. Second, the sunakku-baa and eiga-fan types, treated as mere exceptions in the previous analysis, are no longer exceptional. In third place, our analysis provides a unified account of compounds with short and long C2Js. And, last but not least, it illustrates the uselessness of resorting to the syllable. Not only is reference to the mora and to the foot sufficient for handling the examples but it also provides a more satisfying account of the data, thus confirming the proposals made in Chapter 6.

7.3.3 Compound nouns containing two accent nuclei The accentuation principles which have been presented up until now apply to [modifier-head] structured compounds which only get one accent nucleus after the compounding process. However, there also exist compounds with two accent nuclei. Such compounds preserve the accent pattern of each of their components after the compounding process (Kubozono, 1993b, 1998a; Kubozono, Ito and Mester, 1997). Such formations involve two or more nouns, which, on the morphological level, do not seem any different from the constructions previously seen. How­ ever, they do not follow the same accent rules. Thus kyuushuu + nanbu receives

236

ACCENT

the pattern kyuushuu-nanbu Southern Kyushu,, with two accent nuclei, rather than ^kyuushuu-nanbu if it had followed the previously mentioned rules. In the same way, 775/zm° + soushitsu0 yields jishirf-soushitsu0 4loss of self confidence, (but jishin-soushitsu also seems to be attested), and obama + daitouryou becomes obama-daitouryou president Obama5(^obama-daitouryou). Each member of the compound preserves its original accent nucleus in its original location, and we thus have two distinct prosodic words. The conditions which govern this prosodic structuring are not clear: whereas jishin0-soushitsu0 自イ言喪失 is treated as a succession of two distinct prosodic words, kioku-soushitsu 4loss of memory? (kioku° + soushitsu0) is treated as only one. Yet, the morphological and semantic structure of these two compounds is strictly identical. In a number of such cases, we are no longer dealing with a [modifier-head] structure in the narrow sense but rather with an appositive-like morpho-syntactic structure (see the examples cited above: ‘South(em) Kyfishu’， ‘president Obama,), which can justify that each member keeps its own accent. Nevertheless, tms analysis does not apply to all the cases concerned, for instance, jishin0soushitsu0 cannot be considered to be an appositive construction. In constructions made up of three nouns, accent differences may reflect differences in the morphological and syntactic structure of the compounding. Kubozono (1993b) mentions the example nihon + buyou° + kyoukai0 (tJapan, + ‘dance’ + ‘association’)， which can be realized with two accented nuclei, nihon-buyou-kyouKai (with a [A [B-C]] structure) or with only one nucleus nihon-buyou-kyoukai ([[A-B] C]), depending on the meaning of the compound: 'Japanese association of dance5 in the first case, 'association of Japanese dance5 in the second.

7 丄4 Yamato dvandva compounds In Yamato dvandva (coordinative) compounds, containing two equipollent terms whose order is not fixed by syntactic factors (none of the two modifies the other one), the first member determines the accentual pattern of the compound. The accent of the second word is deleted, and the first member maintains its accent in the original location, following a principle somewhat identical to that governing the accentuation of the phonological syntagm (see section 7.4.). If the first word is atonic, the compound will also be. (63) natsu + huyu haru + aki momo° + kuri

> > >

‘summer and winter’ natsu-huyu ‘spring and autumn’ haru-aki momo-kuri。 ‘peaches and chestnuts’

A C CEN T O F C O M PO U N D W ORDS

237

7.3.5 Compound mimetics

Compound mimetics mostly occur under the reduplicated form of a monomoraic or bimoraic base, possibly followed by the particles to or ni, or the copula da (and its pre-nominal form -na). They also include echo words, which do not consist of the reduplication of an identical base but rather of the concatenation of two different mimetic bases. When used in isolation or followed by the particle to, compound mimetics bear an accent on the initial mora: kiri-kiri(-to) 4diligently5, kon-kon(to) 4coff coff5, pappa(-to) 'puff puff, chira-hora(-to) ^catteringly5. When followed by da (the copula), -na (adjectival ending), or ni (adverbial particle), they are atonic: ルん2-n>20 / rzル ‘piercingly (cold)’. Forms which are, in nature, mimetic, but are etymologically derived from the reduplication of a non-mimetic base, are accented on the penultimate mora when they occur with the particle to: taka-daka-to 'high', and are atonic when they occur with da or ni: atsu-atsu da° 4it is very hot\ 7.3.6 Two-character fixed Sino-Japanese compounds The use of the term ‘compound’ to refer to Sino-Japanese lexemes made up of two Chinese characters, like ゴ^ zwa0 電 g古 4telephone’，たaぎm 家 具 4piece of furniture’，む/za。 医 者 ‘doctor’，み伙カ• 返 事 ‘answer’，ふ • 弟 子 ‘disciple ’， wmch are so numerous in the Japanese lexicon, is debatable. One can argue that such combinations are not necessarily analysed as compounds by speakers in their everyday oral use because they are generally semantically and referentially simple. Besides, their meaning cannot always be deduced from the meaning of each component in a direct and transparent fashion. Moreover, the constituents themselves are bound morphemes that are generally not used independently. For example, the two components of denwa° ttelephone,, den M telectricity,, and wa 話 ‘to speak’， are never employed in isolation.14 In fact, many compounds of this type are totally lexicalized and are to be considered as single lexemes. However, in writing, they contain two identifiable components, each with stable and transparent meaning represented by one Chinese character. This is the reason why I use the term 'fixed compound5 to distinguish such formations from those which are made up of two or more components with true lexical autonomy as in 14 Such formations can be compared to neo-classical compounds in European languages, such as geology or laryngectomy.

238

ACCENT

the examples seen above in section 7.3.1. Some scholars also call them 4SinoJapanese binomials’. Fixed Sino-Japanese compounds written by means of two Chinese characters follow specific accent rules. These rules are mainly conditioned by the phono­ logical length of the compound, its phonological structure, and by its nominal or verbal character. However, many exceptions can be found. In certain cases, semantic criteria also have a role to play. Finally, one should note that some characters impose their own special accent pattern when they appear in the second position of the compound. This leads to lists which try to enumerate all the special cases. Actually, the accent of Sino-Japanese compounds seems to be a topic rather neglected in the field of accent research. More work is thus necessary, especially since the area appears to be a very promising field in terms of the wealth of the data, the theoretical implications, as well as the historical depth.15 Sino-Japanese compounds that I call ‘non-fixed’， that is， compounds which are made up of three or more characters, of which one is a derivational suffix like -go I p 'language5, -jin A tperson,, -tou ^ tparty, (as in nihon-go° 0 ^ f p 'Japanese language*, nihon-jin 0 Japanese person* , shakai-tou° Socialist party5) or which represent the combination of two fixed compounds (like kokuritsu-kouen 'nationaF + 'park* = National park% seishin-bunseki 精 神 分 析 ‘spirit’ + ‘analysis’ = ‘psychoanalysis’） will thus not be dealt with here. Such compounds fall under the scope of the general accent rules described in section 7.3.1. A thorough analysis of the principles governing the accent of fixed SinoJapanese compounds requires, first of all, detailed morphological and semantic analysis of the various types of Sino-Japanese compounds. Such a study cannot be carried out here. For this reason I will confine myself to an overview of the most general principles. Most words of this class are either initially accented or unaccented (Nakada and Hayashi, 1982). Bimoraic two-character fixed compounds with a (fi)(|x) structure generally bear an initial accent: c/wV/ 地 理 4geography’， 家 具 ‘piece of furniture’ ， 主 婦 ‘housewife’. According to Kindaichi and Akinaga (2001)， there exist approximately 20% of exceptions, among which isha° 医 者 ‘doctor’， 知 /而 。邪 魔 ‘obstacle ’ ，此 世 話 ‘assistance’，ゴ^s/11• 弟 子 ‘disciple’， including a rather high number of old loans related to Buddhism, according to Takeuchi (1999).

15 According to Nakada and Hayashi (1982:394), Sino-Japanese has lost all connection with the original Chinese tones, but little is known about the development and attribution of accent in SinoJapanese and more study is needed on this issue.

ACCENT OF COMPOUND WORDS

239

Kindaichi and Akinaga (2001) states that when the compound is trimoraic, with either a (|i|i)(j^) or (|i)(m i) morphological structure, it will be attributed an initial accent if it is nominal in nature but will be atonic ir it is verbal: kokka 'state, n a t i o n seishi 'official history5, shigai f f : ^ 'suburbs1, kokyou ‘native village’ vs. “ た/:ゲ悪彳匕 ‘aggravation’， 入 居 ‘moving in’，化 /从 /° ®Jlh 4stop \ shibou0 'death5. There too exceptions can be found, like henji 返 事 4answer’，c/zなswyb 秩 序 4order’ ，ゐ Mgw 道 具 ‘〖 〇〇1’. However, the criteria for determining whether a word is nominal or verbal remain vague. According to Ogawa (2004, 2008), the influence of the noun/verb distinction on the accent pattern of trimoraic Sino-Japanese compounds is only partial, and not limited to this part of the lexicon (it can also be observed in the Yamato and Western strata). Ogawa presents a statistical study that demonstrates that the prosodic structure of the compound plays the most important role in determining the accent of Sino-Japanese words. Indeed, if one compares the accent patterns o f Sino-Japanese compounds having MmM and MMm structure16 (in syllabic terms, HL and LH structures respectively, where H represents a bimoraic foot ending in /N/, /R/, or the moraic vowel /, and L, a regular mora), it appears that nearly 80% of Mmjvl (HL) words are accented on the first mora, while 82 % of MMm (LH) words are atonic. However, since this calculation does not include words that contain a geminate or that have a bimoraic CVCV structure with one component like jitsu or seki whose final u and z is etymologi­ cally epenthetic, these results need further examination. Moreover, the morpho­ logical structure also plays a role, since a majority (50%) of [MM][M] trimoraic Sino-Japanese words tend to bear an initial accent, whereas 80% of those having a [M][MM] structure are atonic, as shown by Ogawa (2003), cited by Tanaka (2008:176). According to Tanaka (2008), the morphological structure is, on the whole, less determining in kango than it is in wago for accent attribution. The important role of the prosodic structure of fixed Sino-Japanese compounds on accentuation probably explains why accent has practically no distinctive function with homophonous Sino-Japanese two-character words, according to Coyaud (1985). Only a few minimal pairs based on an accentual difference can be found, for instance た〇« た6>« 孝 行 ‘filial piety’ and た洲/:仙 。高 校 4high school’. In the case of four-mora compounds, the same general tendency is observed towards atonicity as that already seen in quadrimoric words of other lexical groups.We thus have ぬ / 大 学 ‘university' た〇た 《如 尸 国 際 ‘international’ ， 如/ ^ ww。探 求 4search’，似な山 •。水 害 ‘flood’，如 た w。帝 国 ‘empire’，/:洲 た 洲 。高 校 ‘high school’. However， words in which the accent falls on the last mora of the first component (with NADM left-shift of the accent when relevant) can be found

16

M represents a full mora, m a deficient mora, and [i any mora.

24〇

ACCENT

among older and/or strongly lexicalized compounds such as kokunai 国 内 o

OJO

•J9

cd

c^

ao

si

'S

‘beautiful’ + ‘cherry tree - Subject’〉 c. atonic + tonic sakura°-ga + utsukushii LHH-H + LHHHL ‘cherry tree - Subject’ + ‘beautitul’

utsukushii sakura-ga LHHHL LLL-L ‘beautiful cherry tree - Subject’

> > >

sakura-ga utsukushii LH-H HHHHL ‘the cherry tree is beautiful’

atonic + atonic

sakura°-ga + saku°

> LHH-H + LH > ‘cherry - Subject’ + ‘bloom ， >

sakura-ga saku° LHH-H HH 4the cherry tree blooms’

In (71a), the word hana on the right loses its accent; only the accent of utsukushii is maintained as the accent nucleus of the phrase. In (71b) and (71c), there is each time only one tonic lexeme, utsukushii, whose accent becomes the accentual peak of the phrase. In the fourth example (7 Id), there is no tonic lexeme, and the whole phrase remains atonic. These principles apply in a similar way to groups containing more than one minor phrase:

25〇

(72)

ACCENT

Major phrase (intermediate phrase) a. mwa'-m + saKW + nana-^a + utsukushu LH-H

+ LH

+ LH-L

+ LHHHL

丄

niwa-ni saku hana-ga utsukushu LH-H HH HH-L LLLLL

•garden —Locative’ + ‘bloom’ + ‘flower - Subject’ + ‘beautiful’ ‘the flower blooming in the garden is beautiful’ b. niwa°-ni + saku° + sakura°-ga + utsukushu LH-H

+ LH

+ LH-H

+ LHHHL

4

niwa-ni saku sakura-ga utsukushii LH-H HH HH-H

HHHHL

‘garden - Locative’ + ‘bloom’ + ‘cherry tree —Subject’ + ‘beautiful’ ‘the cherry tree blooming in the garden is beautiful’ c. niwa°-ni + utsukushii + hana-ga + saku° LH-H

+ LHHHL

+ LH-L

+ LH

I

niwa-ni utsukushii hana-ga saku LH-H HHHHL LL-L LL

'garden - Locative + 'beautiful + *flower - Subject* + (bloom* ‘a beautiful flower blooms in the garden’ d. haru-no + hana-ga + utsukushu HL-L

+ LH-L

+ LHHHL

4

haru-no hana-ga utsukushii HL-L

LL-L

+LLLLL

‘spring - Det’ + ‘flower - Subject’ + ‘beautiful’ fspring flowers are beautiful' Focus displacements may involve accent patterns different from those pre­ sented here,17 but we will not go into the details of what actually relates to

17 Thus, in the statement (72d), focus on hana would prevent deletion of the word accent: haru-no hana-ga utsukushii0 *SPRING FLOWERS are beautiful'.

DIALECTAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL VARIATION IN ACCENT

251

another issue, that of intonation, which will not be treated in this book. Interested readers can refer to the studies by McCawley (1968), Higurashi (1983), Poser (1984)， Kubozono (1987 ， 1989)， Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988)， Koori (1997, 2003), and to Venditti et a l .(2008) for a recent synthesis. It will be noted, finally, that in the preceding examples (71a, b, and c), the initial LH melody is present only at the beginning of the utterance, and not at the beginning of each lexeme. The prosodic words saku°, hana-ga, sakura-ga°, and utsukushii do not start with a L tone, because they do not appear in initial position of the phrase. On the other hand, n iw a °, the first element of the phonological phrase, has a LH melody (but not haru-no in (7 Id) since this word is initially accented). This type of data is confirmation of the analysis by Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988) presented in section 7.1.5, which postulates that an initial L tone is a boundary tone attributed at the level of the utterance.

7 .5 D I A L E C T A L A N D S O C I O L O G I C A L V A R I A T I O N IN A C C E N T Accent appears as a key phenomenon for the understanding of both dialect relations and historical linguistics, including the reconstruction of the ProtoJapanese language. The disparities between the Japanese dialects are huge, to the point that mutual comprehension is not always possible. The prosodic system constitutes one of the loci of variation, as well as the segmental units, the lexicon, and the syntax. From the point of view of word prosody, Japanese dialects are traditionally classified into several basic types (see Map 2), generally from three to five: the accentless type (mw a た 無 ク セ ン 卜 ） ， the one-pattern type sento 一 型 ア ク セ ン ト ） ， the Kagoshima type (sometimes called ‘special type’ 的たws/iw-Wん/ d w w / 伽 特 殊 式 ア ク セ ン ト ） ， the T6ky6 ty p e ひ欲 }^-W た/ dw 東 M 式 ア ク セ ン ト ） ， and the Ky6to-6saka type (む / / a た 2，0 京 阪 式 ア ク セ ン ト ). The accentless and one-pattern types are sometimes confused. This is because they are both characterized by the fact that a constant, recognizable prosody is assigned to phrases. However, whereas this melody fulfils a demarcative function in the one-pattern accentual type— for example any word is invariably accentu­ ated on the last mora in Miyako-no-jo (Miyazaki prefecture) or on the initial mora

252

ACCENT

in Ozu (Ehime prefecture) according to Akinaga (1986)— it does not do so in the case of the accentless type. Moreover, native speakers of the latter type are said to be incapable of perceiving it. The accentless type extends over a vast area north of Tokyo, from the Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures as far as Sendai, as well as into certain parts of the Kumamoto prefecture in Kyushu. The Kagoshima type is widespread in Western Kyushu. It operates a distinc­ tion between two types of words, tonic and atonic. The location of the accent is fixed in tonic words and thus always predictable. For instance, it invariably falls on the penultimate mora in the dialect of the city of Kagoshima.

DIALECTAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL VARIATION IN ACCENT

253

The Tokyo type is the type that has been described throughout this chapter: it is a system in which the prosodic pattern of a word is determined by the presence or absence of an accent and by its location within the word. The Kyoto-Osaka type is characterized by the fact that, in addition to one accent nucleus that may be located on any of the moras of the word, each lexeme carries a register (a tonal melody) that determines the tonal pattern of the moras occurring before the accent nucleus. Thus, in the Kyoto variety, the principle of initial dissimilation does not exist. Two-mora nouns are accented or unaccented, and there exist two registers: a high register (noted H), and a low register~~or rising register according to certain scholars— (noted L), which affects the beginning of the word. In this system, there is a three-way contrast for one-mora words18 (73), a four-way contrast for two-mora words (74), a six­ way contrast for three-mora words (75), a seven-way contrast for four-mora words, and a nine-way contrast for five-mora words. Moreover, in this dialect family, deficient moras except /Q/ have the ability to constitute accent nuclei.19 Most of the data concerning the Kyoto dialect has been taken from Nakai (2002). All the nouns cited below are followed by the subject-marking enclitic particle ga. (73)

Accent patterns in the Kyoto dialect (Kyoto-Osaka type): underlyingly monomoraic nouns a. Words with high register " た が 。 HH-H /ka/ ‘mosquito’ Hhii-ga HL-L /hi/ *dayJ b. Words with low register Lmee-ga° LL-H (or LH-H in certain areas)

(74)

/me/

‘eye’

Accent patterns in the Kyoto dialect: bimoraic nouns a. Words with nigh register "/wTia-が 。 HH-H ‘nose’ Hnatsu-ga HL-L 'summer*

Note that one-mora words are phonetically realized as two moras in this dialect family. So all the monomoraic nouns of Tokyo Japanese are realized with prosodic lengthening: hi = hii ^re*, na = naa ‘name ， ，etc. 19 For descriptions and analyses of accent of the Kyoto and Osaka dialects, see Kindaichi (1974, 1977)， McCawley (1977)， Haraguchi (1977,1999)， Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988)， Nakai (2001 ， 2002), Sibata (1955). Nakai (2001, 2003) provides a presentation of the historical evolution of the Kyoto accent from the Heian period up until the present day which is both all-embracing and well documented.

ACCENT

254

b. Words with low register Lhashi-ga° LL-H ‘chopstick’ Lame-ga LH-L 4rain5 (75)

Accent patterns in the Kyoto dialect (Kyoto-Osaka type): trimoraic nouns a. Words with high register Hsakura-ga° HHH-H ‘cherry tree’ Hatama-ga HLL-L ‘head’ Hniwashi-ga HHL-L ‘gardener’ b. Words with low register Lusagi-ga° LLL-H ‘rabbit’ Lkabuto-ga LHL-L ‘helmet’ Ldeppa-ga LLH-L ‘buckteeth’

In two- and three-mora low-register nouns with final accent {Lame, Ldeppa), the final mora is articulated with a falling melody when no particle follows. When uttered in isolation with no enclitic attached to it, thus ame for instance is generally realized with a falling pitch on the second mora in the Kyoto dialect. Some speakers maintain this falling pitch even when a particle follows, while most others replace it by a nigh pitch, and put a low pitch on the particle. It is to be noted that high-register words never have an accent on the final mora, and that low-register words never have an accent on the initial mora. Another major difference between Tokyo and Kyoto-Osaka lies in the fact that it is generally the second noun that determines the accent pattern of a compound in Tokyo, whereas it is the first noun that does this in Kyoto-Osaka. In view of the various dictionaries written and studies carried out by Japanese dialectologists, one should acknowledge that the criteria for determin­ ing whether a dialect belongs to such or such group are not always explicit. Other more rigorous and explicit accent classifications have been proposed, in particular that of Uwano (1999). Uwano (1999) proposes that the Japanese accent systems are first divided into two groups, accented and accentless. The former is then subdivided into multi-pattern accents (the number of accentual distinctions increases in proportion to the length of the lexeme) and N-pattem accents (N oppositions exist, independent of the length of the lexeme), as follows:

D IA L E C T A L A N D S O C IO L O G IC A L V A R IA T IO N IN A C C E N T

255

(76) Classification of Japanese accent systems according to Uwano (1999) Accented

Multi-pattern With accent registers

Three registers

Ibuki

Two registers Kyoto Without registers

N-pattem accent

Syntagmadependent20

Shizukuishi (Iwate)

Syntagmaindependent

Tokyo

Three-pattern

Oki (Shimane)

Two-pattern

Kagosnima

One-pattern

Miyako-noj〇

Accentless

Sendai， Kumamoto

Two striking一 and apparently contradictory— facts characterize cross-dialec­ tal accent variation. First, it is the extreme diversity of the systems in use, going from accentless dialects (Sendai, Kumamoto) to dialects with several tonal melodies, which look rather more tonal than accentual, and are somewhat reminiscent of some Bantu languages (we shall return to this issue in section 7.6). Second, the systematic nature of the correspondences that exist among the various dialects, in spite of the surface differences, are remarkable: a given word class with the same accent pattern in one dialect will generally correspond to one common other pattern in some other dialect in a consistent manner. Thus, for instance, LH two-mora words of the Tokyo dialect such as hashi 'bridge5, hana 4flower5, or yama 4mountain' regularly correspond to initially accented lexemes in the Kyoto dialect (hashi, hana, yama). The general regularity in the correspondences between dialects can be taken as evidence that the accent

2(, In Uwano’s account, ‘syntagma-dependent， refers to the following property: the fall in pitch is a syntactic marker indicating that the word or syntagma is phrase-final. It does not appear otherwise. So in a dialect like that of Shizukuishi, the fall is not a property of the word but of the phrase-final position. As Uwano puts it, it is a mirror image of the Tokyo dialect (a syntagma-independent dialect): in the Shizukuishi dialect, the rise in pitch indicates the accent kernel, and the fall marks phrase finality, while in Tokyo, the fall is the accent kernel, and the rise functions as a phrase-initiality marker.

256

ACCENT

systems of present-day Japanese dialects represent different evolutions from a single, common original system of which they are the descendants (Hattori, 1951; Kindaichi, 1974, 1977). The prevailing view in Japan is that the Kyoto type has remained the most faithful to the proto-system, but it is sometimes assumed that Tokyo-type dialects have better preserved the original system (Tokugawa, 1972 cited by Shibatani, 1990:213, Ramsey, 1979. There is also a cautious proposal by Hattori Shiro according to Ramsey, 1982). Yamaguchi Yukihiro (1998) even assumes that accentless dialects reflect the most ancient stage of the language (see also the next section). Following the proposal by Kindaichi Haruhiko (1974), based on philological evidence and modem cross-dialectal accent correspondences, monomoraic nouns of Proto-Japanese can be divided into three accent classes, bimoraic nouns into five classes, and trimoraic nouns into six (or seven) classes. Table 7.7 presents some of the modem correspondences between the dialects of Tokyo, Kyoto, Ibuki-jima, Oita, Kagoshima, and Miyako-no-jo for each of the five bimoraic noun classes. In the present-day Tokyo dialect, classes 2 and 3, as well as classes 4 and 5 have merged and now display the same accent pattern. Class 1 is distinguished from classes 2 and 3, on one hand, and from classes 4 and 5, on the other hand; there are thus, in Tokyo, three accent possibilities for two-mora nouns. In Kyoto and Osaka, classes 2 and 3 have merged, but 1,4, and 5 remain distinct, hence the four accent patterns nowadays in this dialect. In the Shikoku Island, which belongs to the Kyoto-Osaka type, classes 1 ,4 , and 5 each form a distinct type, while 2 and 3 are confused; the number of accent constrasts thus amounts to four (this type is not represented in Table 7.7). In Oita, a Tokyo-type dialect spoken in Kyushu, classes 1 and 2 have merged, as well as classes 4 and 5, yielding three distinct accent patterns, partially different from those that exist in Tokyo. In Table 7.7. Cross-dialectal accent correspondences for bimoraic nouns for the five Kindaichi word classes Classes

Tokyo

Kyoto

Ibukijima

1

LH-H

LH-H

HH-H

h a n a -g a

Oita

Kago­ shima

HH-H

LH-L

Miyakono-jo

‘nose’ 2

HL-L

n a ts u - g a

‘summer5 LH-L 3

Hし L HH-L

in u -g a

LH-L

LL-H

‘dog ， 4

h a s h i- g a

Lし H

LH-H

LH-L

LH-L

LL-H

‘chopstick’ HL-L 5

a m e -g a

‘rain，

HL-L

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257

Kagoshima (Kagoshima-type), only two patterns are attested: accented with an accent kernel on the final syllable, and unaccented. Finally, in certain dialects, for example that of Sendai in the Miyagi prefecture or in Miyako-no-jo, Miyazaki prefecture, the difference between the five classes has been completely neutra­ lized. We therefore find an accentless dialect in Sendai (not represented in Table 7.7), and a one-pattern dialect in Miyako-no-jo. For a long time, accentologists have believed that no modem dialect had maintained a five-way accent opposition for two-mora nouns, similar to the one reconstructed for Archaic Japanese, until the discovery by Wada Minoru, in the 1960s, of the Ibuki-jima dialect, spoken on a small island of the Inland Sea (Kagawa prefecture), in which the five classes were still preserved in a distinct way. It is the most complex word-prosodic system among modem dialects. The preceding lines offer the merest hint of the richness and complexity of cross-dialectal comparison and of their relevance for Japanese linguistics as a whole, as well as for general linguistics. However, even if, as pointed out by Matsumori (2003), a colossal amount o f descriptive work has been accomplished from the 1930s on in the field of accentual dialectology, much remains to be done. Indeed, scholars have been mainly concerned with the collection of data from a comparative point of view, with a special emphasis on short, morphologically simple Yamato words. However, there is much more to be uncovered concerning the accent of longer words, of compounds, of inflected forms, or pertaining to the lexical classes of Sino-Japanese or Western loans in the various modem dialects. Within the same dialectal community, accent variation is not rare, as some of the examples given throughout this book illustrate. A number o f words display two or even three different accent patterns which may vary according to the socio-cultural profile of the speaker. Accent dictionaries often provide contradic­ tory information about this sort of linguistic variation, and the actual observation of the empirical facts sometimes also seems in opposition with current descrip­ tions. Age seems to be one of the determining factors for such diversity within a single dialect, as the examples below show. One characteristic of younger people’s speech that is commonly mentioned (and sometimes deplored) in the literature is the spreading of the atonic pattern in most frequently used words, or in words a speaker feels familiarity with, as discussed in 7.1.2. (77) Examples of accent variation standard variety innovating varieties kareshi kareshi。

kuma odoroki, odoroki oi°, oi

kuma, kuma° odoroki0 oi, oi°

‘boyfriend’ ‘bear’ ‘astonishment’ ‘old age’

258

ACCENT

According to Akinaga (2008 )， initial-accented and final-accented patterns are declining in contemporary Japanese; for instance the words akatonbou 4dragon fly' and katana 'blade? now tend to be realized as akatonbou ana Katana. Uwano (2003) states that two- and three-mora finally accented words tend to become atonic or initially accented: change to |ip0, or 妗|1， Similarly, middle-accented trimoraic words turn into atonic or initial accented: - 〉 mifi0 or In addition, it is necessary to point out the role of vowel devoicing, which, as mentioned previously, is likely to cause accent shifts within a word (even if this tendency is not as strong as it used to be in the contemporary language). For this reason, voiceless vowels constitute a major cause of intra- and inter-speaker accent variation.

7 .6 T O N E O R A C C E N T ? T H E J A P A N E S E W O RD-PRO SO DIC SYSTEM FROM THE T Y P O L O G IC A L POINT OF VIEW Throughout this book, the term *accent * has been used to refer to the wordprosodic system of Japanese, thereby following the practice of most modem Japanese linguists. However, it is time to reflect more thoroughly upon the essential nature of the so-called Japanese ‘accent’ from the typological point of view. Traditionally, canonical types of ‘accent’ or ‘stress’ languages such as Spanish，English, or Russian are generally opposed to ‘tone’ languages like Chinese or Yoruba. Some researchers consider that, typologically, two subsets of accent languages exist, in opposition to tone languages: stress accent lan­ guages with an intensity accent (like English) and pitch accent languages with a musical accent (or restricted tone languages). Following tms point of view, Tokyo Japanese is regarded as a prototypical example of a pitch accent language, of which it is undoubtedly the best and most extensively described type. The very use of the term 'accent5 to qualify the word-prosodic system of (Tokyo) Japanese suggests that Japanese might be typologically closer to the accentual type than to the tonal type. Here, it is essential to note that the fact that Japanese linguists use the term 4accent5 (akusento) undoubtedly introduces a bias in the discussion (on the use of the term 4accent? by Japanese philologists of the Meiji Period, see the discussion in the following section). However, if one abstracts away from the common terminology and starts reflecting upon the very nature of the Tokyo Japanese word-prosodic system, taking into consideration the intricate picture formed by such a constellation and variety of other dialects that

T O N E OR A C C E N T?

259

often differ only slightly and in a parametric-like manner from their neighbouring dialects, the issue is far more complicated. So the first question is: typologically speaking, should not some Japanese dialects be classified as tonal rather than as acccentual? Another, more difficult question is: what are the criteria that will allow us to determine whether a given dialect is tonal whereas a neighbouring one is accentual within the Japanese linguistic area? If, like Odden (1999), who, on this point, reflects a rather traditional position, one considers that there exists, on the one hand, languages with distinctive intensity stress like English or Russian, and, on the other hand, languages with tones like Chinese, a language such as Tokyo Japanese, usually described as a pitch-accent language, poses a major problem in so far as its prosodic character­ istics hold, some for stress, others for tone. Thus, like stress, the so-called accent of Tokyo Japanese is privative in nature (a mora is accented or not); it is culminative (there is at most one pitch drop per word); it fulfils a demarcative function; its domain is the word, rather than a lower prosodic unit such as the mora or the syllable, unlike tone; its position may be predictable under certain conditions; it is attributed from one of the margins of the word (see, inter alia, the rule of antepenultimate accent in foreign loans). In contrast, just like tone, the so-called Japanese accent first manifests itself through variation in the fundamental frequency; it can spread from one mora to another mora: in fact, it can be considered to spread across all the moras preceding the HL mark (‘accent’ nucleus) but the first one of a given word; one may consider that there exist latent marks, for example the fact that an atonic word and a word with a tonic final can only be distinguished when an enclitic particle is attached to them; the so-called accent does not affect the quality of the vowels, whereas stress is known to sometimes modify the length and quality of the accented vowels, as in English or Russian; a full word may not possess any 'accent? (i.e. a HL shift), something that is inconceivable in a prototypical stressaccent language where any lexical polysyllabic word inevitably has an inherent accent; one also encounters in Japanese mechanisms of prosodic polarity (or inversion) typical of tone languages, i.e. a lexeme is assigned a tonal pattern opposite its original pattern (Maddieson, 1978), becoming atonic if it is tonic, and tonic if it is atonic (see for example the accent of compound verbs, presented in section 7.3.7). The categorization of a given Japanese dialect as tonal or accentual thus depends on the importance which one chooses to attach to each criterion. For several decades, Japanese linguists, taking into account the fact that there exists at most one mora that is relevant to determine the prosodic pattern of a lexical word in Standard Japanese, have unanimously been in favour of the accent analysis.

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However, as Odden (1999) points out, the culminative criterion is not inevita­ bly determining. In the Bantu family, there exist languages which are classified as tone languages but whose lexemes can have at most a single high tone. In reality, it should be acknowledged that it is precisely for these types of languages that accent analyses are sometimes called upon; see the discussion in Creissels (1994) or Yip (2002:260) who assumes that ‘“accentual” is a convenient descriptive term for a particular type of language in which tone is used in a rather limited way, with one (or perhaps two) tone melodies [ . . . ] . Such languages occupy a transitional ground between pure stress languages and pure tone languages’. It is thus all a matter of definition. If one adheres to the views of Hyman (2001)， who considers that a tone language is a language in which an indication of pitch enters the lexical realization of at least certain morphemes of the language, then, Tokyo (and Kyoto) Japanese is indisputably to be classified among the tone languages. On the other hand, if, like Clements and Goldsmith (1984:13), one categorizes as an accent language any language in which a ‘fixed Basic Tone Melody’ （or more rarely, two) can be specified for all words, this melody being associated with the accented tone-bearing units following the principles of autosegmental phonology (through association of the melody with the vowel marked as accented in the lexicon, and application of well-formedness conditions), then most Japanese dialects are just as indisputably accentual. But whatever the dennition一 and the authors that I have just mentioned seem to agree on this point— it is manifestly apparent that tone and accent are not disjoint classes. There is no rigid dichotomy, it is more a matter of gradual transition or parametric specification. Yip (2002) considers Japanese to occupy an intermediate position between accent languages and tone languages. So does Labrune (2006). Hyman (2009) also agrees that there is no pitch-accent prototype but rather that so-called-pitch accent systems freely pick and choose various properties from the tone and stress prototypes. He claims that it is possible to define ‘tone’ and ‘stress’ but thaい t is impossible to provide an independent definition of ‘pitch accent’. In his 2001 paper and others, Larry Hyman actually categorizes Japanese as hybrid. Tms linguist indeed adopts a parametric approach of the prosodic phenomena. For him, there exist only two prototypes: the tonal type and the intensity-accent type (stress). Each type is characterized by a set of distinct properties. Following this point of view, socalled pitch accent languages represent a mixed type, with prototypical properties that are sometimes typical of purely tonal systems, sometimes of stress systems. So there is no pitch-accent prototype. I shall now adopt this stand. Moreover, Hyman argues that prosodic systems cannot be treated as a continuum placed along a single dimensional scale. Hyman thus takes the rather extreme view that no language must be analysed with a pitch-accent system because a tonal analysis is always possible.

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Cases of evolution of a tonal system towards an accentual system have been reported. Chen (2000) describes the example of the Chongming dialect (Northern Wu dialect, China), and Goldsmith (1984), that of Tonga (Bantu). As for the other direction, that is, the shift from a stress system to a system which can be regarded as tonal, Swedish or Serbo-Croat are well-known cases. This shows that the difference between accent and tone is not clear-cut and dichotomous but that it is either gradual or parametric (I am not sure that the two configurations are as different as Hyman claims because it seems to me that gradation can be obtained by means of a parametric specification, but this discussion is far beyond the scope of this book). In the case of Japanese, such a non-dichotomous, gradual, or parametric approach has as an advantage that the various Japanese dialects would not be classified in typologically disjoint classes. And it is useful, indeed, to be able to account for the linguistic continuity21 that one observes between dialects such as Sendai Japanese (accentless), Kagoshima Japanese (one-pattern accent), and Ibuki-jima Japanese (with a five-way contrast), which are all closely genetically linked. One cannot of course be satisfied with a classification which would call the first ‘an accentless language’ like French or Indonesian， the second ‘an accent language’， a little like Spanish or Italian， and the third a ‘tone language’， like a certain number of Bantu languages. If one language— Archaic Japanese— can develop in a rather short period of time (on the scale of language evolution) and on a small, naturally well-delimited geographical surface so many prosodic types seemingly as divergent as those presented by the Japanese dialects, one must posit that there exists a typological continuity between them. Moreover, as Yamaguchi Yukihiro (1998) and other linguists observe, their geographic distri­ bution obeys a concentric, circular model: the prosodically most complex sys­ tems lie at the centre, the simplest ones (the accentless pattern and one-pattern accent) are found at the periphery in Kyushu and in Northern Kanto, that is, in areas that are not contiguous but on the contrary very remote from each other, and even at the two extreme points of the Japanese linguistic domain. It is thus in a gradual and continuous mode, by successive transitions or waves, that one passes from one type to another by spreading outwards, following a centreperiphery model. On the basis of this observation, Yamaguchi Yukihiro (1998) makes the assumption that accentless dialects actually reflect historically older forms of the language (the language of the Jomon period?), whereas those

」 Such linguistic continuity is reminiscent of what one encounters in the Bantu area. Creissels (1994) notes that the Eastern Bantu languages offer particularly rich material for the study of the various stages of evolution of a tonal prosodic system towards an accent system, as is illustrated by the Swahili case, a language in which the position of the word accent is phonologically predictable. Clements and Goldsmith (1984:13) make a similar remark concerning the typological variety found throughout the Bantu area.

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of central Japan, in particular the more prestigious dialect of the oldest Nara and Heian documents, would have undergone more recent changes. This quite unorthodox view of central dialects as being more recent than peripheral ones actually seems to date back to the work by the great folklorist Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962; see Ramsey, 1982). Two geographically close dialects generally differ only by tiny amounts; but from dialect to dialect, the accumulation of such tiny differences ends up producing extremely different types. Thus there is not, within the Japanese area, any real linguistic break from the point of view of word-prosodic systems. Any theory of word-prosodic systems must be able to account for this situation. This is why a parametric conception, or property-driven approach such as the one that Hyman (2009) calls for, seems better fitted to capturing the diversity of the Japanese prosodic subtypes and to understanding their relationships, even if much work remains to be done in order to modelize the prosodic variety found across the Japanese linguistic domain.

7 .7 A N O V E R V I E W O F A C C E N T S T U D I E S I N J A P A N The preceding reflections quite naturally lead us to look back at the history of accent studies in Japan, because such an epistemological reflection sheds novel and interesting light on the current debates concerning the typological categori­ zation of Japanese from the prosodic point of view. It will also provide us with an opportunity to mention some essential past references within the discipline. Accentology constitutes, within Japanese linguistics, one of the key disci­ plines, and a very significant number of works, in their majority of a descriptive nature, have been devoted to the study of accent in Japan. Interest in the prosodic phenomena goes back a long way. For instance, the Kojiki (712 a d ), one of the first documents to be compiled in the Japanese language, already provides some information on accent. A considerable number of texts of all epochs and of various types also give rough accent information, or sometimes more detailed remarks and analyses on the prosody of Japanese (for a critical presentation of these documents, see Kindaichi, 1974). Leading kokugaku scholars of the Edo period (thinkers and philologists of the 'national studies stream’) such as Keichfi (1640-1701)， Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), and Fujitani Nariakira (1738-1779), to name but a few, have shown interest in accent and paved the way for prosodic studies. These precursors have left analyses of unquestionable interest. Pre-Meiji Restoration scholars use the traditional term of Chinese phonetics ^ (read as sei, shou, or kowe in Japanese) to describe the prosodic system of Japanese words. A majority of them distinguish three different ‘tonalities’

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(my translation for 声 ） in the native words (and not four as in Chinese)， which are generally 上 （high)，平 （mid ，le v e l), 去 （falling). This recourse to the descriptive categories of the Chinese language does not seem to have posed any problem. It should be noted that before them, the Iberian missionaries Joao Rodriguez and Diego Collado, authors of remarkable works of description of the Japanese language in the seventeenth century, had also distinguished three different reg­ isters. This is due to the fact that the language described by all these authors is mainly that of the Kansai area (Kyoto, Osaka) in which, as stated earlier, there exists a falling pitch at the phonetic level, in addition to the high and low pitches. Moreover, it is interesting to observe that ancient scholars of the Japanese language, native and foreigners alike, were all struck by the fact that the same lexeme undergoes drastic modification in the prosodic pattern when used in a compound, an issue that is still of major concern in current research. The term akusento, borrowed from English, has been in use since the Meiji period, but it should be noted that it is also occasionally employed, including at the present time, to refer to the tones of Chinese. As stated earlier, the term usually employed by Japanese scholars of the Edo period to talk about the Japanese word prosody was sei / shd / kowe ^ . It would be interesting to know more about the conditions which have governed the terminological change from sei {shd / kowe) 'tone* to akusento 4accent\ and the reasons which made Japanese philologists prefer to talk about 'akusento' (accent) rather than 4tone? in the Meiji period for the description and analysis of tneir native language. The term akusento already figures as an entry in the 1875 edition of the Daigenkai dictionary, the Japanese language dictionary of the Meiji era. From what we know of the history of the linguistic and conceptual loans in Japan, one can suspect that the choice of the term ‘accent’ may have had something to do with extra-linguistic considerations. It is not impossible th at4accent? might have been considered more prestigious than 'tone5, at a time when Japan was overtly looking to the West as a civilization model, and trying to enter the circle of the nations that were considered more ‘civilized’ by Meiji thinkers and elites ，i.e. Western countries (in accordance with the leaving Asia5 datsu-a-ron ideology advocated by Fukuzawa Yukichi). The most prestigious European languages being accent languages, the Meiji scholars may have sought to differentiate their native language, and hence their nation, from other Asian and African languages, which were labelled as tone languages. Ot course, the typical tone language that Japanese philologists of the Meiji period were most familiar with was not Bantu but Chinese, a typologically very distant language with regard to prosody. They were undoubtedly struck by the prosodic differences which distinguish Chinese from Tokyo Japanese. This also undoubtedly iustified their preference for the term taccent,. However, and to put it in a nutshell, the choice of the term akusento Accent5 might not have been motivated by entirely

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linguistic reasons. This is a terminological, sociological, and historical problem that deserves further investigation. Furthermore, and rather surprisingly, the word 4accent? was adapted as it is in katakana form as akusento, whereas the nineteenth-century practice was, notori­ ously, and especially in linguistics, to create semantic caiques using Chinese characters. For instance me ishi [mei 'name5 + shi tword,] was coined on the Dutch term naam woord. According to Howland (2002), it is especially after 1880 that the use of Western katakana words becomes widespread. For instance, he reports a tripling of loanwords in newspaper articles between 1879 and 1887. Since a たぬ^/7如 ア ク セ ン ト （‘accent’） already figures as an entry in the 1875 Daigenkai dictionary, this term appears as a very early borrowing, anterior to the explosion of katakana loanwords in Japanese. In such a context, it is not illegitimate to wonder about the extent to which the preference for the term akusento might well have conditioned the categorization of Japanese among the accent languages rather than among tone languages from the Meiji period onwards and oriented the subsequent vision and research on Japanese prosody (see the discussion in the preceding section), whereas many languages whose prosodic systems look typologically close to the Japanese systems are regarded as tone languages, for instance a number of Bantu lan­ guages, and of American native languages. The first modem linguistic study of the prosodic system of Tokyo Japanese was published in 1892 by Yamada Bimyo, to whom we owe the discovery that only two pitches are relevant in lexemes of the Tokyo dialect. This position will nevertheless be challenged later on, at the beginning of the twentieth century, by Sakuma Kanae and Jinoo Kaku. Yamada uses the term oneno to refer to accent, a term which also has in Japanese the meaning of intonation. At the beginning of the twentieth century， Sakuma Kanae’s and Jinb6 Kaku’s phonetically oriented work, based on instrumental analyses, dominate the field of Japanese accentology. For these two linguists, the Japanese accent consists of a pitch with three distinctive tones: high, low, and medium. This approach was criticized by Miyata Koichi (1927) ，who, like Yamada Bimy6, recognizes only two relevant levels of height, a vision which is largely dominant nowadays. Observe in passing that since Meiji the issue of Japanese accent has been the subject of much dispute and controversy. The analyses_ and therefore the linguists who stand behind them— have often conflicted: Sakuma Kanae vs. Yamada Bimyo at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sakuma Kanae vs. Miyata Koichi, Hattori Shiro vs. Kindaichi Haruhiko, and Sibata Takesi vs. Kindaichi Haruhiko, in the 1950s are among the best-known instances of such academic strife. Meanwhile, prosodic descriptions of the various Japanese dialects were devel­ oping. Let us mention the works by Hattori Shiro, Kindaichi Haruhiko, Hirayama

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Teruo, Sibata Takesi, and Willem A. Grootaers (inter alia), as well as the historical studies based on the analysis of old materials by Kindaichi Haruhiko, Komatsu Hideo, and Akinaga Kazue. In a 1954 paper, Hattori Shiro clarified the phonological status of the Japanese accent by making a distinction between phonetically oriented descriptions (such as those by Sakuma or Jinbo) and phonologically oriented ones. Hattori thus opened the path towards more formal treatments, cast in various theoretical frameworks, which all have in common that they only specify, at the most abstract lexical level (in Tokyo Japanese), one mora at most in a word as the location of the accent kernel. Hattori (1954) defines the notion of ‘accent nucleus’ （a たmmaz如 -んa たw ア ク セ ン ト 核 ） as the mora after which a prosodic fall occurs， and poses the question of the Japanese accent in the following terms: 4does a given word have an accent nucleus? If it does, on which mora?5. This treatment, which consists in making a distinction between the abstract H tone marking the lexical accent (at most one within a word) and the H and L tones which are attributed at the phonetic level, thus seems more abstract compared to that of Kindaichi (1960) for example, who posits the existence of two tonemes {chdso high ana low. According to Kindaichi’s analysis, each mora of a lexical word is underlyingly specified at the phonological level as high or low (Sakuma and Jinbo had already adopted a comparable view, but with three tonemes: high, low, medium), whereas Hattori argues that only one mora should be specified. Hattori’s approach thus authorizes a truly phonological approach to the problem, even n— as Kindaichi Haruhiko has legitimately observed— his analysis does not easily allow a unified treatment of some other dialects with prosodic systems more complex than that of Tokyo. The year 1958 witnesses the publication of the first modem accent dictionary, the Meikai Nihongo Akusento Jiten (The Meikai Dictionary o f Japanese Accent), under the direction of Kindaichi Haruhiko and Akinaga Kazue. This work will be continuously reedited, the last edition to date being that of 2010. Actually, Kindaichi and Akinaga are also the authors of the other accent dictionary, the

Nihongo Hatsuon Akusento Jiten (A Dictionary o f Accent and Pronunciation of Japanese), published by the Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), the Japanese Broad­ casting Corporation. Another important step was taken by Kawakami (1957, 1961) who proposes to consider that the initial LH sequence occurring in a word is attributed at the level of the accent phrase ( 句 た w) and not at that of the lexical word, an idea that will be taken up by Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988), among others (whereas for Hattori, the initial LH is regarded as a non-distinctive property of the lexical accent).

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More recently, Uwano Zendo has proposed in a 1999 article a new typological classification of the Japanese prosodic systems (see section 7.5). Let us mention also Hayata Teruhiro (1999) whose research from the typological and contrastive point of view is based on his own analyses of the prosodic systems of various languages of Asia, including Japanese dialects. Hayata has also worked out a new proposal for the classification of the prosodic systems of the world’s languages. For the Japanese dialects, Hayata (1999:195) makes an interesting proposal. Roughly speaking, for him, the dialects of Eastern Japan (Tokyo type) are accentual in nature, whereas the Kagoshima type (located in Western Japan) is basically tonal (oncho ). For Hayata, tonal refers to the following property: the location of the pitch within the word is not relevant; the only relevant distinction is whether or not there is going to be an HL pitch within the word, which for Hayata makes this type comparable to a tone language, with the difference that in traditional tone languages such as Mandarin Chinese, the tonal unit is the syllable, whereas it is the word in Kagoshima Japanese. The interesting point in Hayata's theory is that he claims that the Kyoto-Osaka accent type can be analysed as a combination of the Tokyo type (accentual) with the Kagoshima type (tonal). So Kyoto-Osaka would be both tonal and accentual, and as he persuasively argues, the Kyoto-Osaka type is located in the centre of Japan, in the zone where the tonal (Kagoshima/Western) and accentual (Tokyo/Eastem) zones meet. Finally, over the past two decades or so, the work by Kubozono Haruo has brought major theoretical contributions to the understanding of the Japanese accent system, especially with regard to the accent of compounds and that of Western loanwords. The overall picture that emerges from this rapid overview is that accent studies in Japan have followed an original development path, and that the studies which have been devoted to the field are remarkable both in quantity and quality.

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