The Role of Exemplars and Lexical Frequency in Rendaku

• Authors: Shin-Ichiro Sano
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper examines the relationship between lexical frequency and phonological processes, focusing on rendaku in Japanese. Recently, the effect of lexical frequency on linguistic processes, either direct or indirect, has been confirmed in a growing body of studies. However, little attention has been paid to the potential effect of lexical frequency on rendaku. With this background, I examined the effect of lexical frequency on the applicability of rendaku, and developed an analogy-based model by incorporating lexical frequency. The results demonstrate (i) that lexical frequency affects the applicability of rendaku, (ii) less frequent compounds follow the existing patterns that the exemplar offers, and (iii) that rendaku is psychologically real; in other words, rendaku is productively applied to innovative forms, and such an application can be accounted for by the current model.

Keywords

EN

rendaku; lexical frequency; Exemplar Theory; corpus; phonological process; voicing; analogy; similarity; psychological reality; productivity

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Open Linguistics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 1

Dates

received

2014-12-02

accepted

2015-02-11

online

2015-04-16

Contributors

author

Shin-Ichiro Sano

• Okayama Prefectural University

References

• Asao, Yoshihiko. (2007) Rendaku no keisikiteki anarojii moderu. [A formal analogical model of rendaku.] Proceedings of the 135th meeting of the Linguistic Society of Japan, 268-273.
• Bayley Robert, Cory Holland, & Kristen Ware. (2013) Lexical frequency and syntactic variation: A test of a linguistic hypothesis. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 19(2). Available from http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol19/iss2/4
• Bybee, Joan. (2001) Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bybee, Joan. (2002) Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change. Language Variation and Change, 14, 261-290.
• Bybee, Joan. (2010) Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Coetzee, Andries. (2009) Phonological variation and lexical frequency. In Anisa Schardl, Martin Walkow, & Muhammad Abdurrahman (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, volume 1 (pp. 189-202). Amherst: GLSA Publications.
• Coetzee, Andries, & Shigeto Kawahara. (2013) Frequency biases in phonological variation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 31(1), 47-89.
• Erker, Daniel, & Gregory Guy. (2012) The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: Variable subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish. Language, 88, 526-557. [Crossref]
• Frisch, Stefan A. (2011) Frequency effects. In Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume, & Keren Rice (Eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, volume 4: Phonological interfaces (pp. 2137-2163). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Fukuda, Suzy E., & Shinji Fukuda. (1999) The Operation of rendaku in the Japanese Specifically Language-Impaired: A Preliminary Investigation. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 51, 36-54. [Crossref]
• Hamada, Atsushi. (1960) Rendaku to renjoo [Rendaku and renjoo (sandhi)]. Kokugo-to kokubun, 29(10), 1-16.
• Ito, Junko, & Armin Mester. (1986) The phonology of voicing in Japanese: Theoretical consequences for morphological accessibility. Linguistic Inquiry, 17, 49-73.
• Ito, Junko, & Armin Mester. (2003) Japanese Morphophonemics. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Johnson, Keith. (2007) Decisions and mechanisms in exemplar-based phonology. In Maria-Josep Solé, Pam Beddor & Manjari Ohala (Eds.), Experimental approaches to phonology: In honor of John Ohala (pp. 25-40). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kawahara, Shigeto. (2012) Lymans Law is active in loanwords and nonce words: evidence from naturalness judgment experiments. Lingua, 122(11), 1193-1206. [WoS][Crossref]
• Kawahara, Shigeto. (2015) Can we use rendaku for phonological argumentation? Linguistic Vanguard.
• Kawahara, Shigeto, & Shin-Ichiro Sano. (2014) Identity Avoidance and Lyman’s Law. Lingua, 150, 71-77. [Crossref][WoS]
• Kubozono, Haruo. (1999) Nihongo no onsei (The sound of Japanese). Iwanami shoten.
• Kubozono, Haruo. (2005) Rendaku: Its domain and linguistic conditions. In Jeroen van de Weijer, Kensuke Nanjo, & Tetsuo Nishihara (Eds.), Voicing in Japanese (pp. 5-24). Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter,
• Lyman, Benjamin S. (1894) The change from surd to sonant in Japanese compounds. Philadelphia: Oriental Club of Philadelphia.
• Martin, Samuel E. (1952) Morphophonemics of standard colloquial Japanese. Supplement to Language (Language Dissertation No. 47).
• Martin, Samuel E. (1975) A reference grammar of Japanese. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. (2008) The Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese, 2nd edition.
• National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. (2011) The Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese.
• National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. (2011) Chuunagon, version 1.0.2. Available from https://chunagon.ninjal.ac.jp/
• NHK Hoosoo Bunka Kenkyuujo. (1998) Nihongo hatsuon akusento jiten simban [Dictionary of pronunciation and accent of Japanese, new edition]. Tokyo: Nihon Hoosoo Syuppan Kyookai.
• NHK Hoosoo Bunka Kenkyuujo. (2005) NHK kotoba-no handobukku, dainihan [NHK Handbook of language, second edition]. Tokyo: Nihon Hoosoo Syuppan Kyookai.
• Ohno, Kazutoshi. (2000) The lexical nature of rendaku in Japanese. In Mineharu Nakayama, & Charles J. Quinn, Jr. (Eds.), Japanese/Korean linguistics 9 (pp. 151-164). Stanford: CSLI Publications.
• Otsu, Yukio. (1980) Some aspects of rendaku in Japanese and related problems. In Yukio Otsu, & Ann Farmer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in Japanese linguistics (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 2) (pp. 207-227). Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Phillips, Betty S. (2006) Word Frequency and Lexical Diffusion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Pierrehumbert, Janet B. (2002) Word-specific phonetics. In Carlos Gussenhoven, & Natasha Warner (Eds.), Laboratory Phonology 7 (pp. 101-139). Berlin: Mounton de Gruyter.
• Pierrehumbert, Janet B. (2006) The new toolkit. Journal of Phonetics, 34, 516-530. [Crossref]
• Rosen, Eric R. (2001) Phonological processes interacting with the lexicon: Variable and non-regular effects in Japanese phonology. Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia.
• Rosen, Eric R. (2003) Systematic irregularity in Japanese rendaku: How the grammar mediates patterned lexical exceptions. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 48, 1-37.
• Sano, Shin-Ichiro. (2014) Examining Lexical and Phonological Factors on Rendaku in Spontaneous Speech. In Shigeto Kawahara, & Mika Igarashi (Eds.), MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 73 (pp.179-190). Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Sato, Hirokazu. (1989) Hukugoogo ni okeru akusento kisoku to rendaku kisoku [Accent and rendaku rules in compounds]. In Miyoko. Sugito (Ed.), Nihongo no Onsei On’in [The Phonetics and Phonology of Japanese] (pp. 233-265). Tokyo: Meiji Shoin.
• Shimmura, Izuru (Ed.). (2008) Koojien, 6th edition. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
• Takayama, Tomoaki. (1999) Shakuyougo no rendaku/kou’onka ni tsuite (1) [Sequential voicing and fortis in loan vocabulary]. In Report of the Special Research Project for the Typological Investigation of Language and Cultures of the East and West 1998 (part II) (pp. 375-385). Tsukuba: Tsukuba University.
• Takayama, Tomoaki. (2005) A survey of rendaku in loanwords. In Jeroen van de Weijer, ‎Kensuke Nanjo, ‎& Tetsuo Nishihara (Eds.), Voicing in Japanese (pp.177-190). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Tamminga, Meredith. (2014) Sound Change without Frequency Effects: Ramifications for Phonological Theory. In Robert E. Santana-LaBarge (Ed.), Proceedings of the 31st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 457-465). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
• Vance, Timothy J. (1979) Nonsense-Word experiments in phonology and their application to rendaku in Japanese. Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago.
• Vance, Timothy J. (1980) The psychological status of a constraint on Japanese consonant alternation. Linguistics, 18, 245-267. [Crossref]
• Vance, Timothy J. (1987) An introduction to Japanese phonology. Albany: SUNY Press.
• Vance, Timothy J. (1996) Sequential voicing in Sino-Japanese. Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, 30, 22-43.
• Vance, Timothy J. (2008) The sounds of Japanese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Vance, Timothy J. (2014) If rendaku isn’t a rule, what in the world is it? In Kaori Kabata, & Tsuyoshi Ono (Eds.), Usage-Based Approaches to Japanese Grammar: Towards the Understanding of Human Language (pp. 137-152). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Walker, James A. (2012) Form, function, and frequency in phonological variation. Language Variation and Change, 24, 397-415.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/opli-2015-0005