Junctural Alignment in Kyoto Japanese Compound Nouns

Andrew Angeles

doi:10.3765/amp.v9i0.4922

Abstract

Descriptively, in Tokyo Japanese compound words whose second member measures up to four moras in length, compound accent is placed on the syllable immediately preceding or following the boundary, or "juncture," between compound members. The length of the second member of the compound determines which of the two possible syllables is accented. Kubozono (1995) proposes an analysis with a constraint which requires that compound accent be aligned with the juncture. However, Ito and Mester (2018) account for compound accent location without reference to the juncture.Kyoto Japanese compound accent placement is similar to that of Tokyo Japanese (Nakai 2002) with a crucial difference: compound accent is placed on the mora, not the syllable, immediately preceding or following the juncture. This results in a discrepancy in which compound accent is placed on the first mora of a heavy syllable in some cases and on the second mora of a heavy syllable in other cases. I demonstrate that this discrepancy makes alignment to the juncture indispensable for Kyoto Japanese and that general left and right alignment constraints relativized to three levels of recursive word (maximal, minimal, any) cannot by themselves place compound accent in the correct location in all cases.

Highlights

It has been observed in many languages that compound words show prosodic properties which are similar to but still different from prosodic properties observed in non-compound words
Japanese4 is commonly cited as a “pitch accent language,” in which prosodic prominence is signaled by modulations in pitch
This grammar produces compound accentuation which is aligned with the juncture in all cases except when N1 ends in a heavy syllable, and N2 is short

Summary

Introduction

It has been observed in many languages that compound words show prosodic properties which are similar to but still different from prosodic properties observed in non-compound words. Tokyo Japanese allows accent to fall only on the heads of heavy syllables, whereas Kyoto Japanese allows accent to fall on either the head or the non-head of a heavy syllable This results in differences in compound accent location in some cases, producing, for example, the following distinction:. Kyoto Japanese compound accent, on the other hand, is always aligned with the juncture, regardless of whether N1 ends in a light or a heavy syllable or whether N2 is short or long. With this as crucial evidence, I argue in this work that compounds in Kyoto Japanese do require reference to the juncture between compound elements. I argue that “juncture” must be a targetable object for alignment

Background

A Return to Junctural Alignment

Is Juncture Really Necessary?

Conclusion