Secondary High Tones in Koshikijima Japanese

This paper examines the nature and behavior of secondary H(igh) tones in Koshikijima Japanese, a highly endangered dialect spoken on three small, remote islands in the south of Japan. This dialect generally has a mora-counting prosodic system with two distinctive accent types/classes (Type A and Type B), and displays two H tones, primary and secondary, in words of three or more moras: The primary H tone appears on the penultimate and final moras in Type A and Type B, respectively, whereas the secondary H tone occurs at the beginning of the word redundantly. Koshikijima Japanese displays regional variations with respect to the secondary H tone, particularly regarding its domain/position, its (in)dependence on the primary H tone, its interaction with the syllable, and its behavior in postlexical phonology. This paper examines how the secondary H tone behaves differently in three distinct accent systems of the dialect: (i) the system described by Takaji Kamimura eighty years ago, (ii) the one that is found quite extensively on the islands today, including Kamimura’s native village (Nakakoshiki) and Teuchi Village, and (iii) the system observed in Kuwanoura Village today. Comparing the three accent systems, this paper also proposes historical scenarios to account for the different behaviors of the secondary H tone across time and space

Dialectology · Linguistics · Phonology · Pitch accent · Prosody · Syllable · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Speech Recognition and Synthesis

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