Representing the moraic nasal in Japanese: evidence from Tōkyō, Ōsaka and Kagoshima

Abstract

This article reconsiders the nature and representation of the moraic nasal <N> in Japanese dialects, which is largely assumed to be a consonantal mora (Ito 1987, Vance 2008, Labrune 2008) or a variable segment (Yoshida S. 1996, 2003; Yoshida Y. 1999). I examine phonological processes and phonetic descriptions of the Tōkyō, Ōsaka and Kagoshima varieties of Japanese and show that previous representations do not capture all of the facts. I propose that N is best represented variously as a nasal consonant, a syllabic nasal or a nasal vowel depending on the dialect. I frame this account within the theory of Strict CV (Lowenstamm 1996) and I present new representations for N, taking into account segmental and prosodic behaviour of this segment. The overarching contribution is an analysis where the tonal status of N in Japanese dialects is directly derived from the status of nuclear positions that N is associated to or adjacent to, without reference to feature sensitive rules.