Paper short abstract:

Since 1912 the start of each new era had an immediate impact on baby names. This paper discusses the more muted influence of the Reiwa Era, explores its manifestations in currently bestowed names, and explains this phenomenon in the light of the major changes in name selection over the last decades.

Paper long abstract:

The selection, or creation, of a Japanese given name is an elaborate process inspired by particular ideas about the named individual and aspirations for his or her future life, guided by a number of criteria, including the meaning of the kanji used, the sound and the overall image the name evokes, and also a fortunate number of strokes to ensure the child a good fate. The choice of a particular name depends on individual factors such as personal preferences and education, but given names also reflect the period in which they were bestowed, providing interesting clues about social attitudes and values of that particular time, and testifying to short-term influences and fashion trends as well as more fundamental changes in society (Makino 2012, Barešová 2016).

The beginning of a new era is an important event, which many Japanese naturally associate with positive expectations for the future. In the past century, the start of each new era had an immediate impact on baby names bestowed in its first years.

This paper discusses the more muted influence of the beginning of the current Reiwa Era, commencing on May 1, 2019, on subsequent name selections. Based on an analysis of a corpus of names bestowed in 2019 and information concerning the name selection (nazuke episōdo, or name-selection stories), it explores the various manifestations of this long-awaited event. This phenomenon is compared to those of the previous three eras, i.e. Taisho (1912-1926), Showa (1926-1989), and Heisei (1989-2019), and explained in the light of the major changes in name selection over the last several decades (e.g., Kobayashi 2009).

Barešová, Ivona. 2016. Japanese Given Names: A Window Into Contemporary Japanese Society. Olomouc: Palacký University Press.

Kobayashi, Yasumasa. 2009. Nazuke no sesōshi. "Koseiteki na namae" o fīrudowāku. Tōkyō: Fūkyōsha.

Makino, Kunio. 2012. Kodomo no namae ga abunai. Tōkyō: Besuto serāzu.

Paper short abstract:

This study examines truncated predicates in Japanese. By investigating various texts, I will argue that morphologically or syntactically incomplete predicates are becoming established within the language as a strategy for efficiency, by overcoming syntactic limits through re-finitization.

Paper long abstract:

This study examines truncated predicates in Japanese. By investigating data from various texts, I will argue that morphologically or syntactically incomplete predicates are successfully becoming established within the language as one type of strategy for efficiency, by overcoming syntactic limits through 're-finitization'.

The complete or partial truncation of predicates has frequently been adopted in various written texts. Typical cases are observed in those with an upper limit on word count such as newspaper headlines or translated subtitles, in which function words such as the copula da or the function verb suru are easily eliminated for spatial efficiency. This economy, however, disadvantages truncated predicates by causing them to lose their finiteness, which would be potentially manifested through grammatical forms such as tense, modality, aspect, and voice.

In recent examples, though, some truncated non-finite expressions such as -kamo(sirenai) and -nakutya(naranai) are now re-finitized and accompanied by da. For instance, aru-kamo in 'Kore-ha mazi-de zenkoo-ooen aru-kamo-da-zo.'('The whole school cheering might actually happen!'), with da intervening, can be followed by sentence-final modality forms expressing the speaker's mental state.

One reason for this re-finitization might be the recovery of original grammatical accessibility to various modality expressions such as zo, noda, etc., which attach to finite predicates. In addition, truncated expressions cannot appear in the predicate position of subordinate clauses because common connectives such as kedo, ga, and si require finite predicates. Thus, in order to overcome these morphosyntactic constraints, these expressions must be re-finitized by adding da, instead of simply being restored to their original, finite forms. This means that re-finitized predicates achieve efficiency by staying concise and maintaining the pragmatic effects gained through truncation, while adding accessibility to grammatical forms. Some supportive evidence for this claim can be found in corpus data.

These observations lead to the conclusion that re-finitization of these incomplete predicates is functionally motivated by the need for both efficiency and expressiveness. Moreover, this is in line with universal trends in language change. In general, change is first triggered by erosion, such as ellipsis, and is then followed by a process of grammatical reinterpretation, such as reanalysis or re-finitization.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines syllable weakening in Kagoshima Japanese. Final high vowel loss and lenition gives rise to final consonants, e.g. Tokyo [kaki], Kagoshima [kaʔ] 'persimmon'. I discuss generational shift where this pattern is partially lost or lost entirely as well as reasons for such a shift.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines syllable weakening, or nisshôka/入声化 in Kagoshima Japanese (KJ), where high vowel apocope feeds lenition, leading to correspondences such as Tokyo Japanese (TJ) [kaki] 'persimmon' and Kagoshima [kaʔ] (Haraguchi 1984, Kibe 1997, Kaneko & Kawahara 2002).The traditional pattern noted in the literature is quite clear. Apocope elides stem-final u or I. The preceding onset is lenited in one of four ways: I) stops and affricates are debuccalised (/kaki/ > [kaʔ] 'persimmon'), II) fricatives undergo voicing neutralisation (TJ [kazu] > KJ [kas] 'number'), III) nasals undergo place loss (e.g. TJ [kami] > KJ [kaN] 'paper'), and finally IV) rhotics undergo gliding (e.g. TJ [maru] > [maj] 'round'). The two research questions for my fieldwork were Q1: whether weakening is maintained and Q2: whether lenition shows any generational change.

Results

Q1: The above pattern is undergoing shift (field notes, April 2019); older consultants weaken words containing stops as in (1a) and nasals as in (1c), but they do not exhibit syllable weakening for fricatives (1b) or rhotics (1d). Concretely, older speakers no longer exhibit sibilant-final words like [kwaʃ] 'fire' but rather produce Tokyo [kadʑi], but final glottal stops and nasal consonants are found in in words like [kaN] for 'paper', c.f. Tokyo [kami] and [kaʔ] 'persimmon', Tokyo [kaki]. Younger people do not produce syllable weakening and use the Standard pronunciation universally.

Q2: For nouns, it is likely that weakening is diachronic as the final consonant does not alternate (field notes), but in verbs it is active. Consonant-final verb stems in the non-past such as /kak/ 'write' are realised with a lenited stem-final consonant, giving [kaʔ] 'write-NP'. Addition of the Negative suffix /-aN/ allows the underlying stem-final consonant to surface, giving [kakaN] 'write-NEG'. This also occurs with m-final stems, as in /tanom/ 'ask, request', [tanoN] 'ask-NP', /tanom-aN/ [tanomaN] 'ask-NEG'.

The full paper discusses the patterns in further detail and considers phonological and non-phonological factors affecting the change in weakening.