Le japonais

International audienceCette série de 5 conférences invitées données à Evian en aout 2012 vise à donner une présentation générale de la langue japonaise. Elle se décompose comme suit: 1. Introduction 1.1 Le japonais parmi les langues du monde 1.2 Repères historiques 1.3 Langue standard et dialectes 1.4 Parenté et origines 1.5 Le système d'écriture 2. Phonologie 2.1 Les voyelles 2.2 Les consonnes 2.3 Les phonèmes mores 2.4 Unités rythmiques et prosodiques 2.5 L'accent 3. Lexique, parties du discours, morphologie 3.1 Les strates lexicales 3.2 Parties du discours: mots variables, mots invariables 3.3 La composition 4. Structure syntaxique 4.1 La phrase simple 4.2Les phrases complexes 4.3 Le jeu de wa et ga 5. La catégorie de la déférence 6. L'expression de la personne et la nature des pronoms Bibliographie (Voir l'article éponyme paru dans la rubrique "publications

The phonology of Japanese /r/: a panchronic account

The aim of this study is to understand how /r/ emerged and developed in Proto-Japanese and how the conditions of its emergence shed light on its present phonological behavior. The paper first offers a review of the phonetic, phonological, and morpho-phonological characteristics of /r/ in Japanese through examination of a large array of empirical evidence. The picture that emerges is that of an unmarked, phonologically empty segment, confirming a number of previous studies, in particular that by Mester and Itoˆ (Language 65:258-293, 1989). I argue that /r/ primarily developed in Japanese as a default epenthetic consonant in the intervocalic position within the morphological domain of a stem and its affixes, through an 'emergence of the unmarked' mechanism before becoming a fully contrastive phoneme later on by virtue of a phonologization process. A formal account of this proposal within the framework of Optimality Theory is offered. It is shown that the phonological content of /r/ is acquired due to the application of well-formedness constraints (ONSET, ALIGN, MAXIO, DEPIO) as well as that of two sets of markedness constraints (FEATURAL AGREEMENT and HARMONY SCALE), which ensure that the null input is mapped to the least marked output in terms of phonological features

Syllable Weakening in Kagoshima Japanese An Element-Based Analysis

This paper examines syllable weakening or nisshōka (入声化) in Kagoshima Japanese (KJ), where high vowel apocope feeds lenition, leading to correspondences such as Tōkyō Japanese (TJ) [kaki] ‘persimmon’ and Kagoshima [kaʔ]. The traditional pattern noted in the literature is quite clear. Apocope elides stem-final /u/ or /i/. The preceding onset is lenited in one of four ways: 1) stops and affricates are debuccalised (/kaki/ > [kaʔ] ‘persimmon’); 2) fricatives undergo voicing neutralisation (TJ [kazu] > KJ [kas] ‘number’); 3) nasals undergo place loss (TJ [kami] > KJ [kaɴ] ‘paper’); 4) rhotics undergo gliding (TJ [maru] > [maj] ‘round’). This paper presents an initial analysis of the data within Element Theory representational framework

The phonology of Japanese

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More on Japanese /r/: a response to Pellard

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Phonemic preferences in Japanese non-headed binary compounds : what waa-puro, mecha-kucha and are-kore have in common

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Les onomatopées et idéophones du Japonais

Japanese imitative words (gitaigo and giongo) are not simple attempts to reproduce extra-linguistical phenomena in a non arbitrary way. The majority of these words results from definite phonological and suffixai rules operating on a few root words and constitute many semantico-formal familie. This shows that Japanese imitative words are grammaticalized and that their creation is subjected to rules. The second interesting point concerning these words is that many of them are formally very close to Corean imitative words. Such a resemblance attests the fact that Japanese onomatopoeia and ideophones constitute the substratum of a language which was once common to the Japanese and Korean peoples.Labrune Laurence. Les onomatopées et idéophones du Japonais. In: Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale, vol. 16 2, 1987. pp. 277-288

La phonologie du japonais

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