Patterns and scales of expressive palatalization: Experimental evidence from Japanese

Abstract

This article argues for the existence of expressive palatalization (E-Pal) – a phonologically unmotivated process that applies in sound symbolism, diminutive constructions, and babytalk registers. It is proposed that E-Pal is grounded in iconic sound-meaning associations exploiting acoustic properties of palatalized consonants and thus is inherently different from regular phonological palatalization (P-Pal). A cross-linguistic survey of patterns of E-Pal in 37 languages shows that it exhibits a set of properties different from P-Pal. The case study focuses on patterns of palatalization in Japanese mimetic vocabulary and babytalk. Two experiments testing native speaker intuitions of these patterns revealed that both patterns exhibit place and manner asymmetries typical of cross-linguistic patterns of E-Pal. The cross-linguistic survey, the two experiments, and analysis of the origins and structural differences of E-Pal and P-Pal provide strong empirical and theoretical motivation to distinguish the two.