The metrical nature of Japanese pitch accent: evidence from a Shizuoka dialect
Foot-based analyses of Tokyo Japanese accent have been shown to enable interesting
generalizations about compound accent (Poser 1990, Kubozono 1995, 1997) and accent
in loanwords (Katayama 1998; Shinohara 2000). However, as pointed out by Kubozono
(1999), there are several unresolved issues concerning Japanese foot structure. For
example, there is no consensus on the direction of footing, the status of degenerate feet
and unfooted syllables, the relation between foot structure and syllable structure, and the
question of whether feet in Japanese are left-headed (i.e. trochaic) or right-headed (i.e.
iambic). This paper aims to investigate the nature of Japanese foot structure based on
data from a dialect that is closely related to Tokyo Japanese, and is spoken in Shizuoka
Prefecture in the former town of Maisaka, now part of Hamamatsu City (Maekawa
1970; Yamaguchi 1984).
In Maisaka Japanese, there are at least three important generalizations that need an
explanation. First of all, word-initial accent in words with more than two syllables is
only allowed if the syllable in question is bimoraic ((2a) and (3a)). Secondly, all
accented bimoraic nouns have an initial accent (as in (1)). Thirdly, and most importantly,
words with (i) an even number of syllables and (ii) penultimate accent in isolation,
undergo an accent shift one syllable to the right when followed by a particle. Examples
of this accent shift are given in (1) and (3c).
In this paper it is argued that while a purely tonal analysis of the Maisaka data is
possible, a metrical analysis does a better job at providing an explanation for not only
the accent shifts, but also for the distributional of accent locations in the accent system
reported by Yamaguchi (1984). What is more, the metrical approach is superior to a
purely tonal approach in being able to account for related accentual alternations within
compounds and the verbal and adjectival paradigms. The gist of the analysis is that
accent shifts are bound by foot boundaries, with a constraint against
prosodic-word-final accent blocking accent shifts in isolation forms. Furthermore, the
absence of accent shifts in words consisting of three syllables (e.g. (2b)) is caused by a
preference to parse such words with an initial bimoraic foot (i.e. (σσ)(σ)) rather than a
final bimoraic foot ((σ)(σσ)).
The proposed metrical approach to the accentual system of Maisaka Japanese only
works if (i) both trochaic and iambic feet are allowed; (ii) degenerate feet are allowed;
(iii) feet crossing morpheme boundaries are allowed in certain constructions. This has a
number of important implications for metrical approaches to Japanese accentuation in
general.
Examples (adapted from Yamaguchi 1984)
(1) á.me
‘rain’
a.mé.-ga
(2)a. kái.ko
‘silkworm’
kái.ko.-ga
b. su.gá,ta
‘figure’
su.gá.ta.-ga
c. a.ta.má
‘head’
a.ta.má.-ga
(3)a. óo.ka.mi ‘wolf’
óo.ka.mi.-ga
b. mu.rá.sa.ki ‘purple’
mu.rá.sa.ki.-ga
c. as.a.gá.o
d. o.too.tó.
‘morning gloary’
‘younger brother’
a.sa.ga.ó-.ga
o.too.tó.-ga
‘rain-NOM’
‘silkworm-NOM’
‘figure-NOM’
‘head-NOM’
‘wolf-NOM’
‘purple-NOM’
‘morning glory-NOM’
‘younger brother-NOM’
References
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University of California, Santa Cruz dissertation.
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