Where does loanword prosody come from?: A case study of Japanese loanword accent

Abstract

In this paper we analyze loanword accentuation in Japanese with main focus on its relation with native accentuation. At first glance, loanwords display remarkably different accent patterns from native words, with the former but not the latter favoring the accented pattern over the unaccented one. We present statistical evidence that this impression cannot empirically be supported. Loanwords differ from native words in several phonological structures, notably in the abundance of heavy syllables and epenthetic vowels. If these differences are properly controlled, the two types of words, whether lexically accented or unaccented, exhibit very similar accent patterns and preferences although loanwords still show a stronger tendency towards the accented pattern than native words. This study provides a significant implication for the phonetics vs. phonology controversy in the loanword literature, too. We will demonstrate that perceptual and phonological factors interact with each other in a very interesting way with the first factor determining the overall pitch shape of loanwords, which is then constrained by the prosodic system of the recipient language to yield an appropriate output form.