Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The study of Japanese accent has a long history, during the course of which a large number of data have been accumulated by numerous Japanese linguists. Japanese consists of a great number of different dialects, which have their own phonetic peculiarities. The accentual phenomena of these dialects differ from one another in at least some respects. However, dialects can be classified into a number of types in terms of their accentual patterns and tonal melodies.Within the framework of generative phonology, J. D. McCawley (1968b) and Shibatani (1972), among others, have attracted the attention of many linguists to Japanese accentual phenomena by their penetrating analyses. Following their pioneering work, Haraguchi (1977,1979a, 1979b, 1991), Okuda (1971), Kubozono (1993), and many others have further contributed to our understanding of Japanese accent and the advancement of phonological theory. In this chapter, I will draw upon all these previous efforts in order to shed light on a variety of the characteristics of Japanese accent and tonal systems.Despite the variety of Japanese dialects, I will focus attention in this chapter on two dialects: Tokyo Japanese and Osaka Japanese. One of the reasons why I limit discussion to these two dialects is that they are representative accentual systems with one and two basic tone melodies. Also a good number of accentual data for these dialects ... log in or subscribe to read full text