This book examines the diverse prosody of compound nouns in Kansai Japanese, with a special focus on a class of compounds with particularly variable prosody, whose unique prosody is potentially endangered due to their structure and influence from Tokyo Japanese. These compounds serve as important evidence for recursion in prosodic structure in theories of the syntax-prosody interface, as they simultaneously resemble not only other compound words but also non-compound phrases, making them valuable test cases for compound prosodic structure. This book discusses potential reasons for these compounds' prosodic variabilty and what may condition their unique prosody, based on results from novel fieldwork. A unified account of compound prosody in Kansai and three other Japanese dialects is also presented.
Andrew Angeles received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2022. His research interests include phonological theory, the syntax-prosody interface, compounding, compound prosody, Japanese dialects, and historical linguistics.
Contents
Preface Acknowledgments List of Figures and Tables
1 Introduction
â1.1âIntroduction
â1.2âOverview of the Book
â1.3âBackground on Japanese Phonology
â1.4âThe Syntax-Prosody Interface and Match Theory
â1.5âCompounds
2 Accent
â2.1âPitch Accent or Tone?
â2.2âAccent and Tone Bearing Units
â2.3âCharacteristics of the Accentual Systems of Tokyo, Kansai, Kagoshima, and Nagasaki Japanese in Simplex Words
â2.4âIntroduction to Japanese Compounds
â2.5âOverview of Tokyo, Kagoshima, Nagasaki, and Kansai Japanese Compound Words
3 The Syntax-Prosody of Japanese Compounds
â3.1âThe Syntax of Japanese Compounds
â3.2âThe Syntactic Structure of Japanese Compounds
â3.3âProsodic Structures and Prosodic Categories
â3.4âNon-right-headed Compounds
4 Kansai Japanese Compound Accentuation
â4.1âRegister Inheritance and Accent Loss â Overview and Analysis
â4.2âWord Compounds and the Necessity of Junctural Alignment
â4.3âSymmetrical Phrasal Compounds
â4.4âA Deeper Look at the Word-Phrase Compound
â4.5âImplications for a Theory of the Syntax-Prosody Interface
5 Where Do Word-Phrase Compounds Come From?
â5.1âThe N2 Length Problem and the No Unique Word-Phrase Parse Problem
â5.2âDiscovering Additional Conditioning Factors on the Word-Phrase Parse
â5.3âNovel Fieldwork on the Word-Phrase Parse
6 Conclusion Appendix 1: List of Constraints Appendix 2: Full Candidate Sets Appendix 3: List of Nakai Compounds Bibliography Index of Modern Authors Index of Subjects Index of Constraints and Constraint Families Index of Language Names
Linguists, researchers, graduate students, and institutes working in phonology, the syntax-prosody interface, Japanese linguistics, and Japanese dialects. Students of Japanese and/or Japanese dialects may be interested as well.