Mora Obstruent Allomorphy in Sino-Japanese Morphemes

ISBN-13: 9783639075779 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 208 str.

Mark Irwin

Opis

Modern Japanese exhibits apparently irregularallomorphic behaviour amongst a subset of bimoraic S[ino]-J[apanese] morphemes, those with a final mora in -/ki/, whenappearing as the initial morpheme in a SJ bimorphemic compound whosesecond morpheme is /k/-initial. Detailed examination ofsynchronic and diachronic written corpora concludes that what isbeing witnessed is not irregularity as claimed in previous research, but homomorphemic diffusion, a process akin to lexicaldiffusion operating on a homomorphemic level. The independentstatus of homomorphemic diffusion is lent further weight by the phenomenons conforming to Bybees (2000, 2001, 2002)and Phillips (1998, 2001) theories that higher frequencylexemes (here homomorphs) tend to be affected earlier and morethoroughly in the case of reductive sound changes. When all theevidence here presented is examined, homomorphs appear to bebehaving in lexical diffusionist terms just as individual lexemesor morphemes might be expected to.