Abstract
High vowel devoicing is a productive process in Japanese, where /i, u/ become unphonated between voiceless obstruents. Recent studies have shown that the vowels can completely delete as a result of the process, resulting in surface consonant clusters. This seemingly conflicts with the strong CV phonotactic preference that has repeatedly been shown in both phonological and psycholinguistic studies of Japanese. This paper proposes that the apparent conflict can be resolved by having phonotactic repairs and high vowel devoicing apply at different phonological levels, adopting a more sophisticated phonological representation than simple /underlying/ vs. [surface] forms. The proposed framework also makes an empirically testable prediction regarding syllabification of clusters that result from high vowel deletion.
Highlights
High vowel devoicing is a highly productive process in standard modern Japanese where /i, u/ lose their phonation when between two voiceless obstruents (e.g. /ţukue/ → [ţukue] ‘desk’)
Based on the observation that high vowel devoicing targets both underlying and epenthesized vowels, devoicing was argued to be a late, overt level process that occurs after necessary phonotactic repairs are made at the surface level
Since vowels only need to be represented at the surface level for high vowel devoicing to apply, the process is unconcerned with whether the target vowel is underlying or epenthetic
Summary
High vowel devoicing is a highly productive process in standard modern Japanese where /i, u/ lose their phonation when between two voiceless obstruents (e.g. /ţukue/ → [ţukue] ‘desk’). Psycholinguistic studies have shown that this preference for CV structure is so strong that Japanese listeners report hearing illusory high vowels between heterorganic consonant clusters (Dupoux, Kakehi, Hirose, Pallier & Mehler, 1999; Dupoux, Parlato, Frota, Hirose & Peperkamp, 2011) This strong CV preference, conflicts with the surface clusters that often result as a consequence of high vowel devoicing and has led a number of scholars to propose that devoicing cannot result in deletion (Hirayama, 2009; Kondo, 2005; Tsuchida, 1997). The present paper proposes instead that there is no inherent conflict between the CV phonotactics and CC clusters that result from high vowel deletion in Japanese because phonotactic repairs and high vowel devoicing occur at different phonological levels
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