Paper short abstract:

In this talk I clarify that the strength of positional restrictions on the non-nasal coda phoneme Q in Japanese is divided into four levels. This study intends to characterize Q both phonetically and phonologically and to describe how it is phonologically opposed to the nasal coda phoneme N.

Paper long abstract:

In this talk I clarify that the strength of positional restrictions on the non-nasal coda phoneme Q in Japanese is divided into four levels. This study intends to characterize Q both phonetically and phonologically and to describe how it is phonologically opposed to the nasal coda phoneme N, in an effort to reconstruct the phonemic system of Old Japanese. Japanese has coda phonemes, which can be classified into two types by nasality, from the late Heian period onward. One is the nasal coda phoneme N, traditionally called "hatsuon" in Japanese linguistics, and the other is the non-nasal Q, "sokuon." Some N are derived from the nasal phonemes m or n in coda slots of Sino-words. These m and n used to avoid directly preceding onsetless syllables by sandhi in which they copy themselves to the next empty onset slots (e.g. kwan-_ _om → kwan.n_om '觀音'; om-_jau → om.mjau '陰陽'; sam-_wi → sam.mwi '三位'). Nevertheless, N can come in most coda slots including those of the final syllables. On the other hand, Q appears only in coda slots followed by voiceless onsets. , however, appears also in coda slots not followed by the onsets, namely coda slots of the final syllables or those followed by voiced onsets, in some dialects of Modern Japanese. Interestingly, it can come in coda slots immediately before non-nasal obstruent onsets in all of the dialects but in the other coda slots only in few of the dialects. Considering this difference in the strength of positional restrictions on Q, we find out that this coda phoneme avoids immediately preceding the following syllable components in ascending order from the least restrictive ones to the most: (A) The voiced obstruent onsets b, d, z, and g, (B1) The nasal sonorant onsets m and n, (B2) The non-nasal sonorant onset r, (C1) The medials w and j, (C2) no components, and (D) nuclei.

Paper Download (717 KB)