Japanese Linguistics

Abstract

The rigor and intensity of investigation on Japanese in modern linguistics has been particularly noteworthy over the past 50 years. Not only has the elucidation of the similarities to and differences from other languages properly placed Japanese on the typological map, but Japanese has served as a critical testing area for a wide variety of theoretical approaches. Within the sub-fields of Japanese phonetics and phonology, there has been much focus on the role of mora. The mora constitutes an important timing unit that has broad implications for analysis of the phonetic and phonological system of Japanese. Relatedly, Japanese possesses a pitch-accent system, which places Japanese in a typologically distinct group arguably different from stress languages, like English, and tone languages, like Chinese. A further area of intense investigation is that of loanword phonology, illuminating the way in which segmental and suprasegmental adaptations are processed and at the same time revealing the fundamental nature of the sound system intrinsic to Japanese. In morphology, a major focus has been on compounds, which are ubiquitously found in Japanese. Their detailed description has spurred in-depth discussion regarding morphophonological (e.g., Rendaku—sequential voicing) and morphosyntactic (e.g., argument structure) phenomena that have crucial consequences for morphological theory. Rendaku is governed by layers of constraints that range from segmental and prosodic phonology to structural properties of compounds, and serves as a representative example in demonstrating the intricate interaction of the different grammatical aspects of the language. In syntax, the scrambling phenomenon, allowing for the relatively flexible permutation of constituents, has been argued to instantiate a movement operation and has been instrumental in arguing for a configurational approach to Japanese. Japanese passives and causatives, which are formed through agglutinative morphology, each exhibit different types: direct vs. indirect passives and lexical vs. syntactic causatives. Their syntactic and semantic properties have posed challenges to and motivations for a variety of approaches to these well-studied constructions in the world’s languages. Taken together, the empirical analyses of Japanese and their theoretical and conceptual implications have made a tremendous contribution to linguistic research.

Structured speaker variability in Japanese stops: Relationships within versus across cues to stop voicing

“…Additionally, VDC is more likely when the preceding segment is voiced (Davidson, 2016(Davidson, , 2018Docherty, 1992), also in spontaneous speech (Sonderegger et al, 2020). With the exception of geminated consonants, all syllables in Japanese are either open (ending in a vowel) or have a nasal coda (Tsujimura, 2014): all segments preceding stops in these cases are underlyingly voiced, then, and this should a↵ect the likelihood of a stop being realised with VDC. Closure voicing is also used as a contrastive cue for voicing Structured speaker variability in spontaneous Japanese stops in Japanese, though recent studies have shown that the prevoiced variant of the voiced stop has become less common in phrase-initial position , and may represent a sound change towards the exclusive use of positive VOT coupled with F0 variation to signal the voicing contrast Kong et al, 2014;Takada, 2011).…”

“…Davidson (2016) notes the likelihood of voicing during closure in English is closely tied to the voicing of the preceding segment: preceding voiced segments (vowels, sonorants) are more likely to induce voicing during closure than voiceless segments. This is important here since all preceding segments are voiced: Japanese syllables are either open (i.e., consonantvowel) or contain a nasal coda (Tsujimura, 2014): as geminated stops are excluded, all stops are preceded by a vowel or a nasal (potentially with an intervening pause). A preceding vowel does not guarantee the realisation of voicing in the stop closure, however: Figure 1 Our goal for the VDC measurement is to characterise the presence of phonetic voicing during closure in terms of the likely presence of an active voicing gesture (Beckman et al, 2013).…”

“…This study addresses these theoretical gaps by focusing on the acoustic realisation of stops in spontaneous Japanese. Japanese uses both positive VOT -the period encompassing the Structured speaker variability in spontaneous Japanese stops duration of aspiration and the stop burst -and the presence of voicing in the stop closure for marking the contrast between voiced and voiceless stops (Shimizu, 1996;Tsujimura, 2014, Section II A). Typically 'VOT', in work on Japanese and other languages, is defined as the time between the release of the stop and onset of glottal pulsing for the following vowel: VOT is positive if voicing begins after the release of the stop closure, and negative otherwise.…”

Reference data on Japanese vowel devoicing: Effects of speakers' and parents' places of origin and within-speaker reproducibility

“…Generally, whereas vowel devoicing occurs by rule in Eastern dialects, it is less common in Western dialects [9,19]. Fujimoto and her colleague [2,12,20] conducted a series of studies on vowel devoicing in Tokyo and Osaka Japanese, which represent Eastern and Western dialects, respectively.…”

Action-projection in Japanese conversation: topic particles wa, mo, and tte for triggering categorization activities

“…The focus in these S again is on the comment or pred(icate).” (Kaiser et al, 2001 , p. 577, parentheses added). In relation to broader grammatical groupings, Tsujimura ( 1996 , p. 134) sees the topic particle wa as a type of case particle, but Shibatani ( 1990 ) distinguishes case from adverbial particles, and classifies wa, mo , and tte as adverbial particles. The particle tte is variously called a “quotative particle,” a “definition particle” (Kaiser et al, 2001 ) or a “complementizer” (Matsumoto, 1998 ).…”