On some phonological properties of the mimetic vocabulary component of Japanese

Japanese is noted for having a structured lexicon with well defined sub-sections. These sections are etymological in origin, but continue to manifest themselves through their phonological properties. Ito and Mester (1999, 2008) have shown that several of these sub-sections, including the oldest native vocabulary, the Sino-Japanese, as well as more recent loanwords, obey a consistent regularity. This paper considers a further sub-section, the expressive mimetic vocabulary. A database was constructed in order to get a better understanding of the phonological constraints on mimetics. Using this database it can be shown that a restriction on non-geminate p which is active in the general phonology of Japanese and that on its face seems completely disregarded by the mimetic component, nevertheless has a significant effect

語の使用頻度と異文化間コミュニケーション

異文化間コミュニケーションの見地から，その文化で重要な概念を表す語とそうではない語を比べ，前者の方が後者よりも多く存在し，頻繁に使用されるかという問題を考察し，この違いが異文化間コミュニケーションにどのような結果をもたらすかを議論する。英語を含むゲルマン語およびオセアニア語の実例を用い，これらの言語においてその文化および異文化間で重要な概念がコミュニケーションで用いられるあり方について考え，異文化間コミュニケーションの見地から比較検討する。その文化で重要な概念に相当する語が特殊化によってその数が増えるケースと，重要性の低い概念を表す語が方言の多様性によってその数が増えるケースを区別する必要があることを主張する。英語でgriddle cake,pancake,hotcakeのように同じ物（概念）を指す多様な語が存在することは後者のケースの一例である。This paper considers the question of whether languages have more words for culturally important ideas than for trivial ones, and the effects this has on intercultural communication. Using examples from Germanic, including English as well as from Oceanic, I consider how these languages communicate important cultural concepts. I argue that it is necessary to distinguish cases of specialization which do lead to higher number of lexemes for important concepts, from cases where dialect variation of a local nature leads to higher number of lexemes for marginal concepts. An example of the latter is seen in English which has words like griddle cake, pancake, hotcake, all with essentially the same meaning

On the Pronunciation of Low Vowels in Japanese Newscaster’s Speech

An informal observation made over many years, leads me to believe that Japanese newscasters produce phrase final vowel [a] in a consistently lowered and fronted manner. Using samples from NHK news, an analysis was performed which would seem to indicate that this is indeed the case. Further investigation seems warranted

Syllable recycling reduplication : A specific result of a comprehensive theory of infixing reduplication

In some dialects of West Tarangan, many reduplicated forms have the reduplication incorporated into an existing syllable. This can be explained, without stipulation, by the theory of infixing reduplication proposed in Spaelti (1997). This explanation has the advantage of also providing an account, in terms of different constraint ranking, of the variation between dialects that show this pattern, and those that do not

Some Phonological and Morphological Patterns in the Latin Noun Declension System

Latin nouns are traditionally grouped into declension classes. This classification creates an arbitrary linguistic category with no universal validity. This paper investigates the Latin noun system, and argues that the patterns are better captured by referring directly to independently motivated phonological and morphological categories

Dispersion Theory and Reduplicative Fixed Segmentism

Dispersion Theory has been used convincingly to provide accounts of phonological inventories. Recent work by Padgett (2003) has shown that it can also be used to explain other effects in phonology as well. Here the system developed by Padgett is applied to a problem from prosodic morphology-fixed segmentism in reduplication. This has previously been analyzed as an Emergence of the Unmarked effect by Alderete et al. (1999). This account still treats fixed segmentism as an Emergence of the Unmarked effect, but explains the vowel quality as the result of the emergence of an unmarked vowel inventory. This has an added advantage in that it also permits an account of systems where the fixed segmentism takes on more than one vowel quality

Emergence of the Unmarked in Ponapean Nasal Substitution

The Micronesian language Ponapean replaces certain consonants in clusters with a corresponding nasal. The occurrence of this phenomenon with coronals is restricted in two ways not seen with non-coronals: a limitation on the context to reduplication, and an identity requirement on the consonants of the cluster. Both of these restrictions are explained as the interaction of coronal unmarkedness with the Emergence of the Unmarked constraint ranking schema

Fully Distributing Morphology: The Phonology and Syntax of Latin Case Inflections

Certain executions of minimalist syntax use "uninterpretable formal features." This term raises the question, do there really exist features of morpho-syntax that are {em never interpretable}, that play a role in neither Logical Form nor Phonological Form? Case features are in our view best analyzed as categorical head features that are realized on adjacent DPs. Case features are therefore uninterpretable only when they are not in their base positions; in their base position, they are simply categories such as V and P, and are interpretable. However, lexical features such as declension classes cannot be analyzed as "alternative realizations&rdquo of this sort, and so might be examples of purely "uninterpretable formal features.&rdquo We argue that Latin noun and adjective declension class feature bundles (e.g., [3rd declension, ablative, singular] ) are all better reanalyzed, on independent grounds, as spell outs of case and number suffixes whose forms depend only on the phonological features of the final segment of a preceding stem. Moreover, in almost all situations, these dependencies are phonetically natural. The "6 declension classes&rdquo of Latin are simply contextual variants fully determined by 6 possible values of preceding underlying final segments: consonants and 5 distinct vowels. That is, we argue that spell outs of features complexes such as [OBLIQUE, ±PLURAL] or [GENITIVE, ±PLURAL] do not depend on arbitrary uninterpretable morpheme class features. We claim rather that such constructs, at least in the well known Latin inflectional system, are entirely superfluous