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Rendaku in many Tōhoku dialects is manifested in the form of prenasalized voicing, and this paper provides a case study of rendaku in the dialect of Kahoku-chō, Yamagata Prefecture. After describing prenasalized voicing and its relationship to rendaku, the paper reports the results of a study conducted in 2012 on speakers of the Kahoku dialect. Prenasalization did not occur at all uniformly in the productions of the survey participants; there was considerable variation, both between speakers and between target words. Also, while sex and socio-economic group were not predictors, age was, with the oldest participant having the highest prenasalization rate. Given the complex social and historical situation regarding dialect use in Japan, the Kahoku dialect has undoubtedly been altered lexically, morphologically, and phonologically.

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This edited collection presents two sets of interdisciplinary conversations connecting theoretical, methodological, and ideological issues in the study of language. In the first section, Approaches to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas, the authors connect historical, theoretical, and documentary linguistics to examine the crucial role of endangered language data for the development of biopsychological theory and to highlight how methodological decisions impact language revitalization efforts. Section two, Approaches to the study of voices and ideologies, connects anthropological and documentary linguistics to examine how discourses of language contact, endangerment, linguistic purism and racism shape scholarly practice and language policy and to underscore the need for linguists and laypersons alike to acquire the analytical tools to deconstruct discourses of inequality. Together, these chapters pay homage to the scholarship of Jane H. Hill, demonstrating how a critical, interdisciplinary linguistics narrows the gap between disparate fields of analysis to treat the ecology of language in its entirety.