A corpus-based study of geminate devoicing in Japanese: linguistic factors

Kawahara, Shigeto; Sano, Shin Ichiro

doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2013.07.001

Cited by 23 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The corpus studies confirmed that OCP‐violating geminates appear more often as devoiced (about 40%) than do non‐OCP‐violating geminates (about 5%). Kawahara and Sano () also (more or less) confirmed the frequency effect found by Kawahara (), shown in Figure .…”

Section: Corpus Studiessupporting

confidence: 78%

“…Kawahara and Sano () also found an effect of place of articulation on the devoicability of geminates as well: the further back the place, the more likely the geminates are to devoice. This patterning is in accordance with the well‐known aerodynamic difficulty hierarchy of voiced stops (Hayes and Steriade ; Ohala ).…”

Section: Corpus Studiesmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Nevertheless, a question still remained because speakers' intuition and their actual speech behavior do not always match (Labov ) – what do native speakers of Japanese actually do? Kawahara and Sano () and Sano and Kawahara () took up this issue by exploring the behavior of voiced geminates in actual utterances.…”

Section: Corpus Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Geminate Devoicing in Japanese Loanwords: Theoretical and Experimental Investigations

Kawahara

2015

Language and Linguist. Compass

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This paper provides an overview of theoretical and experimental investigations into voiced geminates in Japanese. Active discussion was initiated by Nishimura's (2003) discovery that in Japanese loanword phonology, voiced geminates can be devoiced, when they co-occur with another voiced obstruent (e.g. /doggu/ → /dokku/ 'dog'). This context-sensitive devoicing of geminates has been analyzed within several different theoretical frameworks. The phonetic and psycholinguistic natures of voiced geminates have also been explored, in tandem with corpus-based analyses and computational modeling. This devoicing pattern of voiced geminates in Japanese therefore has had substantial impacts on the recent phonological literature. The empirical focus of this paper is on one simple devoicing phenomenon in Japanese, but implications for general linguistic theories are discussed throughout the paper.

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Section: Corpus Studiessupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Corpus Studiesmentioning

confidence: 91%

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Geminate Devoicing in Japanese Loanwords: Theoretical and Experimental Investigations

Kawahara

2015

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“… 3 In The corpus of spontaneous Japanese ( Kokuritsu kokugo kenyuujo 2008), which provides both underlying forms and surface realisations, OCP-violating geminates are realised as devoiced about only 40% of the time (Kawahara & Sano 2012, Sano & Kawahara 2012). …”

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Laurence Labrune (2012). The phonology of Japanese. (The Phonology of the World's Languages.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv + 296.

Kawahara

2012

Phonology

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Laurence Labrune (2012). The phonology of Japanese. (The Phonology of the World's Languages.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv+296. Shigeto KawaharaRutgers University General assessment and summaryThe phonology of Japanese addresses many aspects of Japanese phonology, and its coverage is rather comprehensive. The book assumes basic familiarity with generative phonology, but is written in an accessible way. The book is a welcome contribution to the field, since, as the author mentions (pp. 6-7), there is no recent reference book for Japanese phonology (the classic reference on this topic, Vance 1987, is now out of print ; a more recent book, Vance 2008, focuses more on phonetics, primarily designed for English-speaking L2 learners of Japanese). 1 The book will be a very useful reference for anybody who is interested in Japanese phonology, especially for non-experts and non-native speakers of Japanese.One aim of this book is to synthesise the theoretical linguistics approach with traditional grammar, known as kokugogaku. The latter approach is descriptively oriented and has continued to reveal a rich set of data, and as such is of great potential interest to theoretical linguists. However, papers in this tradition are usually written in Japanese and are not widely circulated outside of Japan, and hence are accessible to a small subset of theoretical linguists. The book thus achieves the goal of making this rich source of data available to theoretical linguists. In this connection, I find the index to be a useful component of the book, as it comes with a list of linguistic terms in Japanese with their English translations. The book therefore contributes to bridging the gap between theoretical linguists and the Japanese traditional grammar.This aspect of the book would have been better, however, if each insight from the traditional literature had been accompanied by a list of explicit references, especially regarding remarks about dialect-specific patterns and historical changes. For example, on page 27 Labrune discusses various dialects with different vowel systems. The discussion would have been more useful if there had been a reference to the original sources of each dialect, for readers interested in knowing more. Similarly, footnote 1 of Chapter 3 (p. 62) states that in Ancient Japanese stops were realised without affrication before any vowel (unlike Modern Japanese), but again no references are given.Setting aside this problem, the descriptions of Japanese phonology are generally very detailed (partly thanks to the traditional grammar), thereby calling for closer attention from the theoretical literature. The book often approaches 1 A handbook of Japanese phonetics and phonology is currently in preparation (Kubozono to appear).

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Postalveolar co-occurrence restrictions in Slovenian

Jurgec

Schertz

2019

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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A corpus-based study of geminate devoicing in Japanese: linguistic factors

Cited by 23 publications

References 41 publications

Geminate Devoicing in Japanese Loanwords: Theoretical and Experimental Investigations

Geminate Devoicing in Japanese Loanwords: Theoretical and Experimental Investigations

Laurence Labrune (2012). The phonology of Japanese. (The Phonology of the World's Languages.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv + 296.

Postalveolar co-occurrence restrictions in Slovenian

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