<OT> New Posting: ROA-1059

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 1059-1109

Japanese loanword devoicing revisited: A wellformedness judgment study

Shigeto Kawahara <kawahara at rci.rutgers.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1059


Abstract:
In Japanese loanword phonology, geminates optionally devoice
when there is another voiced obstruent within the same stem,
i.e., geminates may optionally devoice when they violate
OCP(voice). This devoicing of OCP-violating geminates has
received much attention in the recent phonological literature.
However, the debates centering around this phenomenon have
relied only on introspection-based data, and no systematic
wellformedness judgment experiments have been performed.
This squib fills that gap. The experiment reported in this
squib shows that Japanese speakers do find devoicing of
geminates natural when there is another voiced stop within
the same word, i.e., when the geminates violate OCP(voice).
The experiment moreover finds other interesting aspects
of devoicing: (i) the naturalness of devoicing of OCP-violating
geminates correlates positively with the lexical frequency
of the words in question, (ii) the naturalness of devoicing
of OCP-violating geminates is not affected by place of articulati
on, (iii) speakers find (context-free) devoicing of geminates
more natural than devoicing of OCP-violating singletons,
and (iv) speakers find the devoicing of OCP-violating singletons
more natural in word-medial position than in word-initial
position.

Comments: ms. Rutgers University. Nov. 2009
Keywords: devoicing, Japanese, loanword phonology, wellformedness judgment study
Areas: Phonology,Psycholinguistics
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1059