A misleading syllable-based generalization about Japanese SJ+/zu/ compounds
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Timothy J. Vance
Abstract
In 1910, Ogura Shinpei published a meticulous critique of Benjamin Smith Lyman’s famous 1894 article on rendaku. In the course of a thorough examination of compounds consisting of a single Sino-Japanese morpheme followed by /su/∼/zu/ ‘to do’, Ogura noted that all the examples with rendaku (i.e., with /zu/) have a monosyllabic first element. This observation invites the inference that there is a causal connection between first-element monosyllabicity and rendaku in X+/zu/ compounds, but a careful review of the history of these vocabulary items indicates that the correlation between monosyllabicity and rendaku is just an accident. There is no reason to believe that first-element monosyllabicity has ever been an active phonological constraint, and the pattern that Ogura identified cannot be used to bolster the view that syllables distinct from moras are real units in modern Tokyo Japanese.
Acknowledgments
This idea for this paper emerged from research carried out while I was member of a project headed by Haruo Kubozono at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics in Tokyo (“Cross-Linguistic Studies of Japanese Prosody and Grammar”), which ran from 2016 until 2022. I am thankful to NINJAL for many years of intellectual and financial support. I am also grateful to three anonymous JJL reviewers for their constructive comments on my first draft. For the most part, I have followed their advice. The remaining errors and deficiencies are entirely my own responsibility.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Deverbal psych nominals and nominative-accusative object case alternation in Japanese: an experimental study
- A misleading syllable-based generalization about Japanese SJ+/zu/ compounds
- “Pseudo-dialect” or “role language”? Speech varieties in three Japanese translations of Gone with the Wind
- Pragmatic functions of wara in Japanese text messages
- Book Reviews
- Timothy J. Vance: Irregular Phonological Marking of Japanese Compounds: Benjamin Smith Lyman’s Pioneering Research on Rendaku
- Hideki Kishimoto: Analyzing Japanese Syntax: A Generative Perspective
- Yoshio Ueno: Gendainihongo no Bunpōkōzō: Keitaironhen [The Grammatical Structure of Modern Japanese: Morphology]
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Deverbal psych nominals and nominative-accusative object case alternation in Japanese: an experimental study
- A misleading syllable-based generalization about Japanese SJ+/zu/ compounds
- “Pseudo-dialect” or “role language”? Speech varieties in three Japanese translations of Gone with the Wind
- Pragmatic functions of wara in Japanese text messages
- Book Reviews
- Timothy J. Vance: Irregular Phonological Marking of Japanese Compounds: Benjamin Smith Lyman’s Pioneering Research on Rendaku
- Hideki Kishimoto: Analyzing Japanese Syntax: A Generative Perspective
- Yoshio Ueno: Gendainihongo no Bunpōkōzō: Keitaironhen [The Grammatical Structure of Modern Japanese: Morphology]
