Japanese loanword devoicing revisited: a rating study

Kawahara, Shigeto

doi:10.1007/s11049-011-9131-7

Cited by 33 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…The experiment indeed showed that Japanese speakers generally judge devoicing of OCP-violating geminates as more natural than devoicing of non-OCP-violating geminates or devoicing of OCP-violating singletons. In this regard, Kawahara (2011b) succeeded in supporting the empirical basis of the claims made about the patterns in (1)-(3). Kawahara (2011a) reports a follow-up experiment using a larger set of stimuli with 49 naive native speakers, which again supported the idea that devoicing of OCP-violating geminates is the most natural environment for native speakers of Japanese.…”

Section: The Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…However, Kawahara (2011b) raises one issue: the Japanese loanword devoicing data are primarily based on the intuitions of two linguists, namely, Nishimura (2003) and Kawahara (2006); i.e. the grammaticality judgments in (1)-(3) primarily come from the authors themselves.…”

Section: The Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dabrowska 2010;Gibson and Fedorenko 2010;Griner 2001;Labov 1996;Myers 2009;Ohala 1986;Schütze 1996). To address this problem, Kawahara (2011b) conducted a rating experiment with 38 native Japanese speakers who did not know about the devoicing pattern. The experiment indeed showed that Japanese speakers generally judge devoicing of OCP-violating geminates as more natural than devoicing of non-OCP-violating geminates or devoicing of OCP-violating singletons.…”

Section: The Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, both Kawahara (2011a) and Kawahara (2011b) used only real words. In the case of Japanese loanword devoicing, it is of some interest to investigate whether the results obtained for real words generalize to nonce words.…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the relevant data have been primarily based on intuition-based data provided by Nishimura (2003) and Kawahara (2006). Kawahara (2011aKawahara ( , 2011b addressed this issue by conducting rating studies using naive native speakers of Japanese. The results generally supported the intuition-based data by Nishimura (2003) and Kawahara (2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing Japanese loanword devoicing: Addressing task effects

Kawahara

2013

Linguistics

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In the loanword phonology of Japanese, voiced obstruent geminates ([bb, dd, gg]) have been claimed to devoice when they co-occur with another voiced obstruent within the same morpheme (e.g. /beddo/ → [betto] 'bed'). This devoicing pattern has contributed much to address a number of theoretical issues in the recent phonological literature. However, the relevant data have been primarily based on intuition-based data provided by Nishimura (2003) and Kawahara (2006). Kawahara (2011aKawahara ( , 2011b addressed this issue by conducting rating studies using naive native speakers of Japanese. The results generally supported the intuition-based data by Nishimura (2003) and Kawahara (2006). However, the rating studies also revealed several aspects of the devoicing pattern that go beyond the intuition-based data as well.The current study further investigates the devoicing pattern by varying several task variables. In particular, this paper builds on Kawahara (2011a, 2011b) by adding (i) nonce word stimuli, (ii) a binary yes/no experiment, and (iii) auditory stimuli. The results show that (i) nonce words and real words behave similarly, but nonce words nevertheless show less variability across different grammatical conditions than real words; (ii) the binary yes/no experiment shows results similar to those of the scale-based experiment; and (iii) while auditory stimuli yield results comparable with those of orthographic stimuli, they also show an exaggerated effect of a phonetic implementation pattern. Overall, this paper uses Japanese as a case study, and finds some task effects in phonological judgment experiments. It is hoped that this paper stimulates further experimental research on phonological judgments of other phenomena in Japanese as well as in other languages. 1 The experiments reported in this paper were first reported in a longer manuscript circulated in Introduction The phenomenon

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Section: The Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: The Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Testing Japanese loanword devoicing: Addressing task effects

Kawahara

2013

Linguistics

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The Nature of Variation in Tone Sandhi Patterns of Shanghai and Wuxi Wu

Yan¹

2018

Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics

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The primary goal of this dissertation is to understand the variation patterns in suprasegmental processes and what factors influence the patterns. To answer the questions, we investigated the variation patterns of tone sandhi in the Shanghai and Wuxi Wu dialects of Chinese.Shanghai disyllables and trisyllables have been documented to have two different sandhi patterns: tonal extension and tonal reduction. Some items can only undergo tonal extension, some items can only undergo tonal reduction, and some can variably undergo either type of sandhi. Previous works have indicated that the syntactic structure, semantic transparency, and lexical frequency of the items all play a role in the sandhi application.Additionally, the morpheme length of trisyllabic items (1+2, 2+1) is also expected to affect their sandhi application.A variant forms' goodness rating experiment, together with a lexical frequency rating experiment and a semantic transparency rating experiment, showed that syntactic structure has a primary effect on sandhi application in general. It overrides the effect of semantic transparency, especially in modifier-noun items. The nature of the lexical frequency effect in Shanghai is related to the syntactic structure of the lexical item. Morpheme length effect is not found.Wuxi disyllables and trisyllables also have been observed to have two different sandhi patterns: tonal substitution and no sandhi. Some items can only apply tonal substitution, and some can apply either form variably. Syntactic structure and semantic transparency have been iv reported to affect Wuxi sandhi application, and morpheme length is also expected to have an effect in trisyllabic sandhi application.The three rating experiments conducted in Wuxi found that due to the lexical listedness of the opaque substitution pattern, frequency influences both modifier-noun and verb-noun positively, although modifier-noun prefers tonal substitution form more. Semantic transparency effect is only apparent for verb-noun disyllables. Moreover, morpheme length also distinguishes sandhi application between 1+2 and 2+1 modifier-noun items.In all, by using quantitative rating experiments, the present study shows that tone sandhi variation is regulated by both grammatical factors, such as syntactic structure, morpheme length, phonological opacity, and nongrammatical factors, such as lexical frequency.v

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Aspects of Japanese loanword devoicing

Kawahara

2011

J East Asian Linguist

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Nishimura (2003) first pointed out that in Japanese loanwords, voiced geminates devoice optionally when they co-occur with another voiced obstruent i.e. when they violate OCP(voice) (e.g. /baggu/ → [bakku] 'bag'). This devoicing of geminates has been used to make several theoretical claims in the recent phonological literature. However, these claims have so far largely been based on intuition-based data provided by Nishimura (2003) and Kawahara (2006). Kawahara (in press) addressed this problem by conducting a rating study. The first aim of this study, building on Kawahara (in press), is to further support the empirical foundation of these theoretical claims by way of a large-scale rating study. The current study shows that (i) the OCP and geminacy each affect naturalness rating of devoicing, and (ii) that there is nevertheless something special about the combination of the OCP and geminacy.The second aim is to test an assumption behind the recent literature on this phenomenon.The assumption is that this devoicing pattern is monolithic-i.e. all voiced geminates uniformly undergo devoicing in a certain phonological environment. The current experiment shows that this assumption is too simplistic. In particular it shows (i) speakers rate the devoicing of affricates as natural as that of stops, (ii) speakers find devoicing of items that merge with other lexical items less natural, (iii) speakers rate devoicing as more natural when there are multiple triggers, (iv) speakers find devoicing of [dd] more natural than that of [gg], and (v) speakers find devoicing of more frequent items more natural.2

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Japanese loanword devoicing revisited: a rating study

Cited by 33 publications

References 49 publications

Testing Japanese loanword devoicing: Addressing task effects

Testing Japanese loanword devoicing: Addressing task effects

The Nature of Variation in Tone Sandhi Patterns of Shanghai and Wuxi Wu

Aspects of Japanese loanword devoicing

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