JAPANESE PALATALIZATION IN RELATION TO THEORIES OF

言語研究(Gengo Kenkyu)101(1992),107～145 107

JAPANESE PALATALIZATION IN

RELATION TO THEORIES OF

RESTRICTED UNDERSPECIFICATION*

Lawrence SCHOURUP (Osaka Women's University)

Ikuhiro TAMORI (Kobe University of Commerce)

ABSTRACT

Mester and Ito (1989) claim that patterning in the distribution of an autosegmental palatalization morpheme in Japanese mimetic forms constitutes strong evidence for the theoretical claim that among phonological features only those which are redundant are unspeci-fied in underlying representations (Restricted Underspecification). We provide experimental evidence to show that the curious distribution of palatalization in Japanese mimetics, including nonoccurrence with r, on which the argument for underspecification crucially depends, is predictable from facts about the articulatory difficulty of. repeated CVCV structures. We show that the distributional regularities in-volved, when correctly stated, apply not only to mimetics but to the entire vocabulary of Japanese, as well as to at least one lan-

guage, Spanish, in which palatalization is not an autosegmental mor-pheme. Underspecification of features, restricted or otherwise, is not required to describe the distribution of palatalization in Japa-nese mimetics, and the M&I analysis based on underspecif ication is both inadequate and unmotivated.

1. INTRODUCTION. Any phonological theory which provides

* We wish to thank Hisao Kakehi, Masayoshi Shibatani, Timothy

L. Vance, Arnold M. Zwicky and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. We are also grateful to our

many subjects and informants, and to Akiko Yamakage, who assisted in gathering the Spanish data. Responsibility for error -is entirely our own.

108 Lawrence SCHOURUP, Ikuhiro TAMORI

for distinct underlying and surface levels of representation must

address the question of how representation at these two levels may

differ. In regard to distinctive features, as at least partly com-

prising representations at both levels, an important issue is wheth-er or not the values of all such features must be fully specified

at the underlying level. Although SPE called for full specification,

more recent approaches, such as Autosegmental Theory (e.g. Le-

ben 1973, Goldsmith 1976, Clements 1976) and Lexical Phonology

(Kiparsky 1982, 1984, 1985, etc.) have usually maintained that at least some feature values , are left unspecified in underlying re-

presentations. Debate has centered not on whether underlying

underspecification is necessary, but on which features qualify for

underspecification. Two general theoretical positions have emer-

ged : Restricted Theories of Underspecification maintain that only redundant features are unspecified in underlying representations,

whereas contrastive features are specified ; Radical Theories of

Underspecification, on the other hand, maintain that all predictable

underlying feature values, both redundant and unmarked, are left

unspecified.1)

As these two positions on underspecification make different

claims with regard to the nature of underlying representation, at-

tempts have been made to uncover empirical evidence which would

indicate which position is correct. Various arguments appearing

in the literature have lent support to one theory or the other with,

however, no clear preponderance of evidence on either side. Phe-

nomena appearing to call for Restricted Underspecification are ad-

duced by McCarthy (1985), Mester (1986), Steriade (1987), Clements

(1988), and Christdas (1988), while Kiparsky (1982), Archangeli

1) We adopt here the terminology in Mester and Ito 1989. See their n. 7-8 (262) for comments on variant theories which may be sub- sumed under these two approaches.

JAPANESE PALATALIZATION 109

(1984), Borowski (1986), and Archangeli and Pulleyblank (1986)

argue in favor of Radical Underspecification.

In a recent article in Language Mester and Ito' (1989) offer

what they refer to as 'clear evidence' (276)2) and a 'quite strong

argument' (277) for Restricted Underspecification. They claim that

correct characterization of the distribution of palatalization in Japa-

nese mimetics calls for the underspecification of redundant features,

and the full specification of nonredundant but unmarked features

(276), contrary to the assumptions of Radical Underspecification

but consistent with Restricted Underspecification.

In an initial response to M&I (Schourup and Tamori 1992)

we argued that the assumption that nonautomatic palatalization in

Japanese mimetics is the result of lexical attachment of a mor-

pheme, upon which M&I base their argument for Restricted Under-

specification, is incorrect. We argued that what M&I describe as

a 'relatively productive' lexical process is at best a sporadic sound-

symbolic correspondence. In the present paper we attempt to show

that, even if palatalization could be regarded as morphemic and

systematically assigned, as M&I propose, it would still be unnec-

essary, and in fact quite unwise, to invoke underspecification to ac-

count for regularities in the distribution of palatalization in Japa-

nese mimetics. We show that these regularities, in all their odd

complexity, fall out automatically from more general patterning

which extends far beyond the data M&I consider.

2. REVIEW OF MESTER AND ITO 1989. In this section we

sketch the argument for Restricted Underspecification presented

in M&I 1989 in sufficient detail to permit evaluation of our own

claims. We wish to clarify at the outset that our objections are

not to the form of the argument given by M&I-we, in fact, find

the argument to be adroit and internally consistent-but rather

2) Unless otherwise apparent, all page numbers refer to M&I 1989.

110 Lawrence SCHOURUP. Ikuhiro TAMORI

to inadequacies in the data used to support the argument (see S.1

above) and to the failure of the entire analysis to square with

newly obtained experimental evidence.

In outlining the argument for underspecification, in S.2.1, we

will, following M&I, limit our discussion mainly to bimoraic CV-

CV reduplicative mimetic roots. Our conclusions are, however,

meant to apply throughout the Japanese vocabulary.

2.1 The Japanese lexicon contains a large number of items of

native origin which are traditionally regarded as mimetic. While

this sector of the vocabulary can only be partially delimited on

semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological grounds, such

forms are usually readily identifiable by native speakers, and there

is historical evidence of their distinctiveness as a morphological

class (see Hamano 1986: 6-7).3)11 A great many of the forms in ques-

tion are reduplicated bimoraic bisyllables (e.g. netya-netya 'sticky',

gorogoro 'rumbling'). Some such reduplications fall into phonetic

3) The reduplicative mimetics under discussion here are phonetically indistinguishable from reduplications of Sino-Japanese origin. How-

ever, these two types of reduplications can be distinguished in most cases. First, the particle to is optional for reduplicated mimetic

manner adverbials but obligatory for reduplicated Sino-Japanese manner adverbials ; thus, e.g., mimetic kira-kira (to) hika-ru 'twinkle' and

gorogoro (to) koroga-ru 'roll along', but Sino-Japanese doo-doo to/** tataka-u 'play fairly' and tan-tan to/** hanasu 'talk indifferently'.

Second, CVCV reduplicated resultative adverbial mimetics all have an emphatic form with gemination (thus, for example, kuta-kuta ni

'worn out' and bisyo-bisyo ni 'thoroughly wet' have the emphatic forms kutta-kuta ni and bissyo-bisyo ni, respectively; and reduplicated CVCV manner adverbials (except those lacking nonreduplicated emphatic

forms ; see Tamori 1984 57-62) also have, emphatic forms (e.g. gura-

gura to. 'shake violently,-> gura-gurat-to and bata-bata to 'fall down one after another' -> bata-batat-to). Sino-Japanese reduplications,

such as kaku-kaku 'splendid' and satsu-satsu 'whisperingly', have no such 'geminate forms. Note also that Sino-Japanese reduplications

are written in Chinese characters while mimetics are written in.either the hiragana or katakana syllabary.


pairs such that one member of the pair differs from the other mem-

ber only in the presence versus absence of palatalization on one

of the consonants of the root, as in zabu-zabu and zyabu-zyabu, both

of which indicate types of splashing sounds. M & I propose that in

such pairs the form with palatalization (hereafter the P form) ac-

quires palatalization through lexical association of an autoseg-

mental palatalization morpheme ƒÎ, having the phonetic content

[ + high, - back],4) with the root of the nonpalatalized (hereafter

N) form.5) When the N root does not occur as an independent

form, as is often the case (e.g. munya-munya 'mumbling' but *mu-

na-muna), the P form is nevertheless thought to be derived from

an underlying N root. M&I gloss the palatalization morpheme Z -

as 'uncontrolledness' (but see Schourup and Tamori 1992). Each

bimoraic 'half' of a form like zyabu-zyabu is thus seen as mor-

phologically complex :

(1) [plain root] zabu 'splashing'

[ƒÎ morpheme] [+high -back] 'uncontrolledness'

[P root] zyabu 'indiscriminate splashing'6)

M&I admit two types of exception to this scheme. First, they

specifically exclude from their generalization the automatic palata-

lization which occurs in Japanese before a high front vowel (e.g.

tas-u, 'add, PLAIN PRES.' but tasy-i-masu 'add, POLITE PRES.'),

on the grounds that such palatalization 'does not count as a re-

4) The feature content of the morpheme is altered in an appendix

(285-9), but this does not bear on the present discussion. 5) It is immaterial to their main conclusion whether this happens

before or after. reduplication ; M&I take no position on this point

(see 268 n.22). 6) This is the gloss given by M&I. For an alternative formulation,

see Schourup and Tamori 1992.


alization of the r morpheme, and does not interact with the palatal

prosody' (273) ; following M&I we will in what follows, except

where specifically noted, not be referring to automatic palataliza-

tion. Second, M&I acknowledge the possibility that for certain

forms there might no longer be a synchronic connection between

two phonetically paired forms (as, they suggest, in the case of

horo-horo 'weeping elegantly' and hyoro-hyoro 'looking thin and

weak' (269 fn- 26; see Schourup and Tamori 1992 for discussion).

The M&I proposal, as thus far presented, does not specify

where palatalization occurs when ir is attached to N roots. For

this determination M&I turn to a study by Hamano (1986). Ha-

mano states four generalizations which specify which segments in

a mimetic root can bear palatalization (see Hamano 1986: 229-

231). These generalizations are restated by M&I (269-70) in the

form of the descriptive laws in (2) :

(2)

[ I ] MONOPALATALITY : Only one palatalization is permitted per root.

[ II ] INITIALITY : Palatalization of noncoronals is restricted

to root-initial position.

[II] CORONAL DEXTRALITY AND DOMINANCE : Palatali-

zation occurs on the rightmost coronal contained in a

root (but see IV below). If a mimetic root contains both

a coronal and a noncoronal, palatalization appears on the

coronal, regardless of position.

[IV] RHOTIC EXCLUSION : The segment r, although coronal, is never mimetically palatalized.

In accordance with (2), bimoraic roots permit palatalization

as shown in (3), where y indicates nonautomatic palatalization

(however expressed phonetically : see M&I 268 n. 23), and c and n indicate coronal and noncoronal segments, respectively. Paren-

thesized combinations in (3) are permitted by (2) but do not ac-


tually occur ; asterisked combinations are ruled out by (2) ; other

combinations do occur.

(3) ccy *cyc *cycy *ryry

cyn *cny *cyny *rry

nyn *nny *nyny *ryr

ncy *nyc *nycy

cyr *cry *cyry

nyr *nry *nyry

(rny) *ryn *ryny

(rcy) *ryc *rycy

To account for these distributional facts, M&I propose that ƒÎ

is mapped onto coronals in the root from right to left. In roots

which lack a coronal, palatalization associates with the leftmost

noncoronal either by a 'universal convention associating free auto-

segments to potential bearers one-to-one left-to-right' or by a De-

fault Docking convention by which palatalization is associated to

the last segment reached when the root is scanned from right to

left. M&I note that determining which of these two conventions

is correct is irrelevant to the theoretical claim they are making

(272).

RHOTIC EXCLUSION (2-IV) is accounted for by assuming

that r is unspecified for place when ƒÎ attaches to the root. M&I

offer three types of evidence for this aspect of their claim (274-

6) :

1. r is the only resonant in Japanese which does not contrast

with any other resonant in its manner class with respect to place:

there are contrasting nasals (m, n, N), and both labial and palatal

glides (w, y) but r is the only liquid. Thus place specification is

entirely redundant for r, and would be omitted from underlying

representations under the assumptions of Restricted Underspecifi-

cation.


2. It is arguable that r occurs epenthetically to break a

vowel hiatus in the verbal paradigm (e.g. tabe-u ->tabe-ru 'eat,

PRES.' ; see 274)) ; this may be taken as a further indication that r

is the unmarked resonant in Japanese. As M&I acknowledge,

however, in other cases s, not r appears to be the epenthetic con-

sonant (see 274 n. 34).

3. M&I claim that r is the only Japanese consonant which

cannot be geminated. It is possible to relate this restriction to

the underspecification of r for place: that is, underspecification

may be seen as exempting r from gemination. We examine this

claim in detail in S. 5 below.

The argument for Restricted Underspecification is as follows.

Since r in mimetics is exempt from palatalization, it stands as an

exception to the association of palatalization with coronals provi-

ded for in (2-III). The exceptionality vanishes, however, if r is

unspecified for place when palatalization is attached to the root.

On Restricted Underspecification, r would be obligatorily unmar-

ked for place in underlying representations just as required for

proper r attachment since place is redundant for r, whereas

other consonants would have to be marked for place in underlying

representations because for all consonants other than r, place is

contrastive.

This argument is impressive for two reasons. First, it neatly

accounts for why r alone of all the consonants is exempt from

palatalization by ƒÎ. Secondly, it accounts for the otherwise un-

explained fact that, although r does not palatalize in mimetics, it

does commonly palatalize in other sectors of the Japanese vocabu-

lary (e.g. ryokoo 'trip', syiryoku 'sight'). In the analysis M&I pro-

pose, this distributional restriction results from the fact that the r

morpheme, with its meaning 'uncontrolledness', is found only at-

tached to mimetic roots.

The strength of the position taken by M&I, then, derives from


the fact that if their solution is rejected, any solution which is

suggested to replace it must offer, and motivate, an alternative

way to rule out mimetic ry while simultaneously ruling in nonmi-

metic ry (see 276).

3. THE DISTRIBUTION OF PALATALIZATION IN REDUPLICA-

TIVES. In this section we argue that observed restrictions on the

distribution of palatalization in Japanese mimetic forms does not

constitute evidence for the theory of Restricted Underspecif ication.

We argue instead that these restrictions, including (2-IV) RHOTIC

EXCLUSION, reflect articulatory difficulties resulting when speak-

ers attempt to produce certain identical bimorae in immediate

succession and that these difficulties cannot be based on the pho-

nological mechanism proposed by M&I. We show that the same

restrictions hold for speakers of Spanish, a language in which lex-

ical assignment of palatalization is not a possibility, and also for

nonmimetic forms within Japanese. We conclude that under-

specification, whether restricted or radical, is unnecessary to account

for the distributional regularities adduced by M&I in support of

their theoretical claim.

3.1. ARTICULATORY DIFFICULTY. The arguments we pre-

sent in S. 3. 2-4 are based on systematically elicited judgments of

articulatory difficulty. Difficulty judgments frequently enter into

phonological discussions informally, for example, in the common-

place observation that assimilatory processes serve to promote ease of articulation (e.g. Lass 1984: 199) and usually play a heu-

ristic role (see, e.g. Donegan and Stampe 1979) in all but the most

formalistic discussions of phonological naturalness. However, such

judgments have not previously been elicited in quantity as exter-nal evidence for or against phonological analyses.

We will claim that native speakers of a language are capable

of making gross comparative judgments of the articulatory diffi-


culty of sound combinations they are asked to produce, and we

will illustrate how such judgments, when assessed through com-

parisons of data from speakers of different languages, can be mar-

shaled as a strong form of negative evidence against certain pho-

nological claims. Specifically, we will show that experimentally

elicited difficulty judgments by native speakers of Japanese and

Spanish can be used to construct a strong argument against the

treatment of Japanese palatalization proposed by M&I as evidence

for the theory of Restricted Underspecification.

Use of difficulty judgments in theoretical argumentation is

subject to a number of prima facie objections. It can be objected,

for example, that when subjects judge a sound combination to be

hard to pronounce, they may unwittingly be basing the judgment

on phonological ill-formedness rather than on articulatory difficulty

per se. This objection, and others of equal seriousness, must be

squarely met if the claim that judgments of phonological difficulty

are to be admissible in phonological argumentation is to be ac-

cepted. We will argue that, while such objections do rule out

many potential uses of difficulty data, they do not affect the very

limited use of such data in the present study. We defer detailed

discussion of this matter until S. 4 so that, in justifying our claim

that arguments based on phonetic difficulty judgments are allowa-

ble in certain cases, we may make reference to the testing tech-

niques and results presented in S. 3. 2-4 below.

3.2. DIFFICULTY JUDGMENTS : JAPANESE. In this section

we report on experimental elicitation of difficulty judgments from

native speakers of Japanese. Two tests were given to groups of

undergraduate students at four universities in Japan. The first

test was designed to check on the initial plausibility of our hypo-

thesis (stated below). The second test provided a more focused

and comprehensive evaluation of the same hypothesis using a

slightly different method of testing.


Before constructing our tests, we had observed, informally,

that nonsense reduplications based on the starred combinations in

(3) were in general judged by native speakers of Japanese we

consulted to be more difficult to pronounce than those based on

unstarred combinations. In attempting to say such nonsense forms,

speakers frequently produced unintentional simplifications (e. g.

tagya-tagya ... •¨taga-taga ...) . Also, they judged nonoccurrent non-

sense reduplications based on the unstarred combinations in (3)

to be as easy to pronounce as actually occurring forms, which

suggested they were not mistaking familiarity of a form for ease

of articulation.

Our hypothesis in designing both tests was that the restricted

distribution of palatalization in Japanese mimetics is due to arti-

culatory difficulties ; in particular we hypothesized that the starred

combinations in (3) are ruled out because they are difficult to

repeat in immediate succession (see discussion in S.7 below), as

is required for the production of mimetic reduplications in Japa-

nese, and not because they violate language-specific phonological

conditions on the attachment of the putative palatalization mor-

pheme ƒÎ to mimetic roots.

3.2.1. TEST 1 (NONMIMETIC WORDS). As an initial test

of our hypothesis, we administered a forced-choice test (T1) con-

taining 64 pairs of Japanese words to 143 undergraduate students

in Japanese universities, all of whom were native speakers of

Japanese. Each word had the structure CVCV, with one of the two

consonants palatalized. Subjects were asked to repeat each word

aloud four times in immediate succession, then circle the word in

each pair which was more difficult to repeat in this manner. Each

pair consisted of one word with a CVCV shape unstarred in (3) and

one word with a starred shape. No mention of mimetics was made

in presenting the questionnaires, and each paired word was an

occurrent nonmimetic form presented in Chinese characters (Japa-


nese mimetics are written in either the hiragana or katakana sylla-

bary, not in characters). Subjects were also given the pronunciation

of each word to assure that the characters were read uniformly.

We reasoned that if the starred combinations in (3) are ruled

out for reasons of articulatory difficulty, judgments of difficulty

involving successive repetition of independent nonmimetic words

should be governed by constraints identical to, or at least includ-

ing, those that characterize the distribution of palatalization in

mimetic reduplications.

To keep the preliminary questionnaire short, testing of com-

binations with r and those with two palatalizations was deferred

until T2 (see S. 3. 2. 2. and S. 3. 4 below). Four representative pairs

for each other possible pairing of a CVCV combination starred in

(3) with a combination unstarred in (3) were included in T1. In some cases no Japanese words of the required shape could be found

which contained a nonautomatic palatalization, and in these cases

words with automatic palatalization were substituted (see discus-

sion below). Table 1 summarizes the results for the different

pairings. Although in the table the unstarred member of each com-

bination is listed first, on T1 itself the order was randomized.7)

Table 2 shows the same data broken down into two groups.

Unparenthesized figures are the totals for pairs in which both

members contained nonautomatic palatalization ; the parenthesized

figures are for pairs in which one or both members contained an

automatic palatalization.

The results given in Tables 1 and 2 show clearly that repeti-

tions of nonmimetic words based on starred combinations in (3)

were judued to be more difficult than renetitions of words ha sed on

7) The total number of responses varies slightly from combination to combination due to differences in class attendance on different

days of testing, and because a few responses were left blank or had to be discarded as uninterpretable.


ccy 77/*cyc 487 nyn 63/*cyc 503

ccy 116/*cny 445 nyn 53/*cny 506

ccy 220/*nny 348 nyn 130/*nny 435

ccy 97/*nyc 469 nyn 44/*nyc 524

cyn 34/*cyc 525 ncy 21/*cyc 539

cyn 23/*cnY 530 ncy 17/*cny 535

cyn 80/*nny 491 ncy 46/*nny 523

cyn 24/*nyc 541 ncy 21/*nyc 543

Total unstarred : 1, 066

starred : 7, 944

Table 1 : T 1 Results

ccy 0 ( 77) /*cyc 0(487)

ccy 0(116)/*cny 0(445)

ccy 0 (220) /*nny 0(348)

ccy 0 ( 97) /*nyc 0(469)

cyn 6 ( 28) /*cyc 274(251)

cyn 23( 0)/*cny 530( 0)

cyn 80( 0) /*nny 491( 0)

cyn 24( 0) /*nyc 541( 0)

nyn 41(22) /*cyc 382 (121)

nyn 53( 0) /*cny 506( 0)

nyn 130( 0) /*nny 435( 0)

nyn 44( 0)/*nyc 524( 0)

ncy 3 (18) /*cyc 137 (402)

ncy 13( 4) /*cny 261(274)

ncy 36 (10) /*nny 349 (274)

ncy 14( 7)/*nyc 267(276)

Total 'nonautomatic' pairs : 467/4597

'automatic' pairs : (59/3347)

Table 2 : T 1 Results (Nonautomatic vs. automatic)

unstarred combinatons. These data offer a preliminary indication,

therefore, that the restrictions in (2) may be applicable not only

to Japanese mimetic vocabulary, but, as hypothesized, to imme-

diately successive repetitions of nonmimetics as well. The results

in Table 2 also suggest that the restrictions apply both to auto-

matic and to nonautomatic palatalization, as might be expected if

the constraints were general and phonetically based rather than

phonologically restricted to only a portion of the Japanese vocabu-lary.


3.2.2. TEST 2 (NONSENSE FORMS). Two objections can

immediately be raised to our interpretation of the T1 data. First,

the pair members in each T1 pair differed from each other not

only in the placement of palatalization, but also in other respects.

This was an inevitable result of our using only actually occurring

forms to construct the pairs. Thus it is not entirely clear that

the patterning reported in Tables 1 and 2 is due only to the place-

ment of palatalization. A second objection arises from the fact

that all but one of the words judged to be difficult by our T1 sub-

jects are words of lower frequency than those the subjects judged

to be relatively easier to repeat. This was, again, occasioned by

the use of actual words in T1: in most cases high frequency words

of the appropriate shape were not available. The T1 subjects may,

therefore, have been judging unfamiliarity rather than phonetic

difficulty, though it is notable that in the one case in which the

pair member judged more difficult happens to be a much more frequent form than the other member (kosyi 'ancient poems'/furyo

'unforeseen', 9-131), the tendency is still in accord with (2).

To answer these two objections, in T2 only nonsense forms

were used. Each pair in T2 was a minimal pair in which the

members differed only in the placement of palatalization. No forms

tested corresponded to actually occurring Japanese forms, either

mimetic or nonmimetic ; all were therefore unfamiliar to the sub-

jects. CVCV nonsense words were constructed using every pos-

sible combination of 11 consonants (m, p, b, t, s, z, r, n, k, g, h),8) but

consonants were not self-paired (e.g. tatya) .9) The vowel [a] was

8) w and y are not palatalizable ; for d there is no clear evidence of

a palatalized counterpart in the mimetic vocabulary (thus, for ex-

ample, zyabu-zyabu •fsplashing' corresponds to zabu-zabu •fsplashing',

not to dabu-dabu 'loose'). We follow Hamano (231) in considering

forms such as zyoki-zyoki 'cut with scissors' to contain zy rather

than dy.

9) There is one CVCV reduplication in Japanese with identical conso-


used in both syllables whenever the resulting form was not an oc-

curring Japanese word. If use of [a]-[a] produced an occurring

form, [o]-[o] was tried, then [u]-[u] until a nonoccurrent form was

arrived at. In four cases use of [a]-[a] and [o]-[o] produced oc-

current forms and use [u]-[u] resulted in one pair member con-

taining an affricate due to the automatic affrication of [tu] to [tsu] ;

in three such cases the vowel combination [a]-[o] was used, and

in one, where [a]-[o] produced an occurrent form, [o]-[a] was used.

In every pair, however, the same vowels were used in both mem-

bers of the pair to assure that the pair members differed only in

the placement of palatalization. No automatic palatalizations were

included. The ordering of pairs, and of items within pairs, was

randomized and the pairs were presented to 139 subjects, all native

speakers of Japanese, who had not been exposed to T1.

Table 3 lists the results of T2 for each CVCV combination

tested, exclusive of combinations with double palatalizations and

those containing r, which are reported and discussed separately

below. Hyphenated numbers for each consonant pairing represent

the total number of 'more difficult' responses given by subjects

for palatalization on C1 versus C2. The symbol + indicates that a

particular consonant combination with palatalization in the posi-

tion marked by + does occur in Japanese mimetics (though, of

course, the nonsense forms tested in T2 all had different vowels

from the occurrent forms; see the discussion of vowel selection

just above) .

The results of 81 of the 90 pairings in Table 3 are as predic-

ted by the generalizations in (2). Combinations not predictable

from (2) are marked with asterisks. Note that all of the unpre-

dicted results are for consonant pairings which do not occur as

.Japanese CVCV mimetics. That is, there is perfect accord between

nants (i.e. rero-rero) ; for discussion see S.3.4 below.

122 Lawrence Schourup,Ikuyiro TAMORI Table 3. Difficulty judgment of 139 subjects for immediately successive repetitions of C'VC2V nonsense syllables with

palatalization on C1 versus palatalization on C2 (see tex

t).


Table 3 and the restrictions in (2), although the restrictions in

(2) may now be seen as incomplete (see discussion in S.9 below). The results reported in Table 3 are consistent with our hypothe-

sis that the distribution of palatalization in mimetics is based on

articulatory difficulty. We return to interpretation of the T2 re-

sults after discussing the results of further difficulty testing in

S.3.3.

To test the applicability of (2-I) MONOPALATALITY to

nonsense repetitions, three pairs with double palatalizations paired

with single palatalization were included in T2: patyo vs. pyatyo

4-135; syaka vs. syakya 0-139; zyaro vs. zyaryo 2-137. Since these

results indicate almost categorically that the monopalatality con-

straint is in effect in T2, and since double palatalizations had been

found to be extremely difficult in our pilot study, no further testing

of double palatalizations was undertaken.

3.3. DIFFICULTY JUDGMENTS : SPANISH SPEAKERS. By

limiting consideration to minimal pairs differing only with respect

to palatalization, and by using only nonsense forms, T2 removes

the objections raised earlier against the results of T1; that. is, it

eliminates the possibility that the test results are not directly re-

lated to the placement of palatalization, and it eliminates the pos-

sibility that subjects are judging relative familiarity of forms rath-

er than difficulty. When these factors have been eliminated, the

results obtained are still consistent with our hypothesis that arti-

culatory difficulty is responsible for the distributional restrictions

on palatalization in mimetics.

Although the results of T2 are consistent with our hypothesis,

however, they do not unequivocally support it. An alternative

interpretation of the T2 data is possible which makes no reference

to articulatory difficulty. In particular, it can be claimed that the

T2 subjects judged the nonsense forms (and possibly even the ac-

tual words used in T1, though this seems less plausible) as if they


were mimetic.10) Since mimetics are typically reduplicative and

reduplications with a nonautomatic palatalization are largely re-

stricted to mimetics in Japanese (but see S.6 below), subjects may

have subconsciously 'felt' the test words as mimetic forms and

applied the same principles in judging their articulatory difficulty

as in producing existing mimetic forms. If so, the results of T2

can be viewed as simply reconfirming the reality of the constraints

in (2) without offering an alternative explanation for those con-

straints. On this interpretation T2 could be seen as simply show-

ing that nonoccurring mimetics palatalize in the same way that

occurring mimetics do.

This objection cannot be eliminated by changing the form of

the test. What is needed is independent evidence that the dis-

tribution of palatalization in Japanese mimetics and the more de-

tailed patterning found in the data for T2 are in fact attributable

to articulatory difficulty. Claims that phonetic difficulty is invol-

ved in linguistic patterning may take two forms. First, one might

claim that certain articulatory difficulties arise due to some particu-

lar language-specific phonological cause or causes. The M&I analy-

sis could, in this sense, be viewed as having provided plausible

structural reasons within Japanese for the judgments we elicited in

T2. The other alternative is to claim that given difficulties are

due to physiological and/or perceptual constraints implicit in the

species, and thus are not language-specific.

A valid objection to the M&I analysis based on difficulty test-

ing would have to provide evidence not only that the T2 pattern-

ing is found in some other language, but also that the particular

structures to which M&I attribute the patterning in Japanese are

not present in that language. If such evidence could be found,

the burden of proof would shift to M&I : they would have to show

10) This possibility was pointed out to us by an anonymous reviewer.


that the identical patterning in a language other than Japanese is

due to independent factors from those which cause the patterning

in Japanese, and also that these independent factors are not also

present in Japanese (otherwise their own analysis would merely

be one of two possible alternatives, and the argument for Restric-

ted Underspecification would lack force).

To determine whether or not the patterning of palatalization

in Japanese is language-specific, we administered an abbreviated

version of T2, hereafter referred to as T3, to 14 native speakers

of Spanish none of whom had significant ability in Japanese.

Spanish was chosen because it permits surface palatalization of

several consonants, because palatalization in Spanish cannot be

argued to be an autosegmental morpheme, because Spanish has

a flap r reasonably close to that of Japanese, and because the other

consonants of Japanese also have fairly close approximations in

Spanish.

Since in T2 results for voiced and voiceless segments were

extremely similar, only voiceless stops were tested in T3. Only

C2

Table 4. Difficulty judgments for 14 Spanish speakers (cf. Table 3) Asterisks mark tendencies differing from those found for Japanese.


combinations with one palatalized consonant were tested. Vowels

were chosen according to the procedures described for T2. The

results of T3 are reported in Table 4. Combinations involving r

have again been set aside for separate discussion in section S. 3. 4

below. Where fewer than 14 responses are tallied, the subject

responses were ambiguous or missing.

The results in Table 4 are similar to the responses given by

the Japanese speakers. Of the 42 combinations tested, only 4

(9.5%) show tendencies different from those found for Japanese in T2. Although some tendencies in Table 4 are slight, the overall

degree of similarity is remarkable when one considers that there are

obvious differences in the phonological systems of the languages

and in the articulation of individual segment types. Table 4 thus

provides evidence that coronal dextrality and dominance are not re-

strictions specifically associated with the placement of the putative

Japanese morpheme *; rather they are more general restrictions

which govern the placement of palatalization even in languages

where there is no evidence of a palatalization morpheme. These

restrictions appear to apply to the immediate repetition of pala-

talized syllables [see S. 7 below].

3.4. RHOTIC EXCLUSION IN T2 AND T3. Although we

have thus far established that coronal dextrality and dominance

extend to at least one other language, this fact, though important

in accounting for the distribution of palatalization in Japanese

mimetics, does not constitute clear evidence against the specific

arguments given by M&I in support of Restricted Underspecifica-

tion. We have thus far only shown that certain restrictions in (2-

III) are not limited to Japanese. This demonstration, while M&I

may not have foreseen it, does not bear directly on their argu-

ment for Restricted Underspecification. We have simply uncove-

red a possible physiological motivation for some of the restrictions

which Hamano and M&I posited on distributional grounds alone.


We turn now, however, to discussion of palatalization pattern-

ing in difficulty pairs involving the segment r. These pairs are

of critical importance to the present discussion since the validity

of the M&I claim crucially depends on the assumption that

underspecification of the segment r in Japanese is responsible for

the behavior of r in regard to mimetic palatalization. In particu-

lar, RHOTIC EXCLUSION is said to arise because r is unspecified

for place when it attachment occurs and so cannot undergo r at-

tachment. We will show that this analysis lacks supporting evi-

dence.

Table 5 lists the 20 consonant combinations in T2 involving r,

and evaluations of their difficulty reported by our 139 T2 subjects.

Table 5: Combinations with r in T2

Note first that if the results of T2 accorded perfectly with (2-

IV) RHOTIC EXCLUSION, ry would always receive more difficulty

responses than the other consonant in each combination. But sev-

eral of the combinations in Table 5, those marked with asterisks,

do not accord with (2-IV). Note also that there is some pattern-

ing among the asterisked combinations in Table 5 : in all but one

case (r-n) the unexpected values are for pairings of r with a

noncoronal ; aside from (r-n), the results for r paired with coronals

accord well with (2-TV).


Much of the patterning in Table 5 can be accounted for once

it is recognized that there is a hierarchy of palatalizability among

Japanese consonants such that some consonants are less receptive

to palatalization in repeated CVCV structures than are others.

Since in T2 all possible consonant combinations were tested, we

can use the total number of difficulty responses for each consonant

to obtain a rough idea of this ranking.'" The results are given

in Table 6. As may be seen, coronals, other than r, consistently

rank below noncoronals.

Table 6: Palatalizability of segments in T2

Based on this ranking, the exceptionality of r-n in Table 5

is easily accounted for. As seen in Table 6, n is far less able to

11) The testing of all possible combinations of consonants should have balanced out inaccuracies due to the fact that the judgments were comparative rather than absolute. Note also that there were 6 un-

interpretable responses in T2. Individual totals in Table 6 might have been slightly higher if these responses had been usable; in par-

ticular, the totals for g and m might have been increased by as many as 3 responses, and those for p, t, k, b, n and r might have been in-

creased by one response. Other totals (s, z, h) would not have been affected. This variation obviously could have had no effect on the

rankings in Table 6.


support palatalization in repeated CVCV structures than any other

coronal except r. Although in general ry is rated as very difficult

in combination with second-syllable coronals (see Table 5), the

exceptional difficulty of ny among the coronals appears to `steal

away' the difficulty responses that ry would'receive in combination

with the much 'easier' coronals t, s, and z. (Note that palatalized

n received an especially large number of 'more difficult' responses

in the second syllable in T2; see Table 3.)

It remains to offer an account for the other seven unexpected

results in Table 5. These are only unexpected, of course, if we

take (2-IV) RHOTIC EXCLUSION to be well established. But let

us consider the phonetic difficulty judgments in Table 5 themselves.

We can see clearly in Table 5 that r has the following two general

characteristics in regard to palatalizability in CVCV repetitions : r

palatalizes rather easily when a noncoronal is in the second sylla-

ble and is more difficult to palatalize in combination with a second

syllable coronal ; and ry receives a substantial difficulty rating in

the second syllable regardless of what first syllable sound it is

paired with (see further discussion below).

We can now account for the absence of ry in mimetics. First

note that r without palatalization is virtually nonoccurrent in in-

itial position in Japanese mimetics. Though M&I claim that r

does not occur at all in initial position in mimetics (271), there

are in fact five common mimetic forms with initial r (two of which

are mentioned by Hamano 1986: 22) : riN riN 'ringing', riiN 'ring-

ing', riiN riiN 'small bell ringing or insect chirping', ruN ruN

'fashionably and excitedly' (a recent form) and rero-rero 'mum-

bling', only the last of which has CVCV shape,19) and in only one

12) rero-rero is exceptional in another respect as well: it is the only

Japanese mimetic reduplication containing two identical consonants. The meaning of the form suggests it may be intentionally deviant-

an iconic representation of mumbled speech.


of which (ruN-ruN) r is potentially palatalizable.13)

The paucity of r-initial mimetic forms has a historical basis.

As M&I point out (271 n. 29) :

This constraint ... reflects the well-known constraint in Old

Japanese against initial /r b d g z/; cf. for example Miller

(1967: 194) ... while initial voiced obstruents appeared in late Old and Middle Japanese as the result of the loss of certain

vocalic prefixes (e.g. iduru>deru 'come out'), r is still unat-

tested initially in lexical (qua potentially word-initial) Yamato

morphemes.

Since there is a virtual absence of r in the first syllable of

mimetics, no special explanation is required for the absence of ry

in mimetics in the same position. This point is made both by

Hamano (1986: 230) and M&I (271). What this means, though,

is that RHOTIC EXCLUSION reduces, in its effect, to exclusion

of ry from the second syllable of CVCV structures.

As we have just seen, a substantial proportion (44.6%-99.3%)

of subjects in T2 judged ry in the second syllable to be more dif-

ficult regardless of which consonant occurred in the first syllable.

The substantialness of these dissenting responses can be seen in

perspective if we look at the dissenting votes for the 26 actually

occurring combinations in Table 3 (marked with +). For none

of these is the number of dissenting responses as great as for the

combination P-r in Table 5. The average number of dissenting

responses for the allowed combinations in Table 3 is 11. 08/139=

8.0%, while the average for combinations with r in the second

syllable is 108.8/139=78.3%.

Pursuing our hypothesis that non-language-specific difficulty

is reflected in T2, we posit that that (2-IV) RHOTIC EXCLUSION

13) Hamano argues on the basis of accentual patterns that run-run is not a true mimetic adverb (22).


is a distributional statement resulting from the more complex

state of affairs described in (4) :

(4) PALATALIZABILITY OF r IN REPEATED C1VC2V

STRUCTURES IN JAPANESE

ry is :

(i) easy to articulate but, for historical reasons, nonoccurrent in Japanese as C1 in combination with a non-

coronal C2 ;

(ii) hard to articulate, and for historical reasons non-

occurrent in Japanese, as C1 in combination with a

coronal C2 ;

(iii) prohibitively difficult as C2 in combination with any other consonant.

It appears that the T2 subjects were judging articulatory dif-

ficulty caused by something other than phonological ill-formedness

of the type posited by M&I. One strong indication that this is so

emerges from Table 5. Rhotic exclusion as motivated by M&I ex-

cludes all palatalized r's in Japanese, mimetics. If a case is to be

made that our results for r are due to phonological ill-formedness

based on underspecification of r, our results in Table 5 should

have shown total exclusion of ry combinations. The fact that an

easily definable subset of the responses in Table 5 in fact viola-

tes rhotic exclusion rules out the possibility of arguing that our

results for r are based on underspecification of r and lends strong

support to ourr overall claim that the T2 results in general are

based on some other type of difficulty.

An even more compelling case can be made, however, when

we consider the r responses for Spanish speakers, shown in Table 7.

The tendencies in Table 7, with the exception of the two

pairs with p, which show no tendency in either direction, exactly

parallel those for the Japanese speakers reported in Table 5. But

this identity in patterning cannot be referred to the mechanism


M&I proposed for Japanese. Although the Spanish liquids l and r

are both apico-alveolar, and so might be unspecified for place in

Table 7 : Combinations with r in T3

underlying representations (at least in dialects which lack palatal

[ƒÉ], as most do), to extend their claim to Spanish, M&I would have

to argue that palatalization in Spanish is assigned to words through

association of a palatalization morpheme, or some similar mecha-

nism, and that, just as in Japanese, coronality is unspecified at

the time that this association occurs. No such analysis has ever

been proposed for Spanish, and for very good reason : the alter-

nations which might be used to justify such an analysis simply

do not exist. The data in Tables 5 and 7 constitute strong evidence

against the claim that Japanese mimetic palatalization provides

support for theories of Restricted Underspecification.

4. OBJECTIONS TO DIFFICULTY TESTING. We noted earlier

(S. 3. 2) that the admission of phonetic difficulty judgments in

phonological argumentation is subject to several possible objections.

We now consider these objections as they relate to the present

line of argument.

(i) VALIDITY. There is no ready guarantee that repor-

ted judgments of articulatory difficulty are what subjects claim they

are. It is not immediately apparent, for example, whether a given

judgment is actually based on articulatory difficulty rather than

on the relative familiarity of two compared forms. More serious-


ly, a reported judgment of phonetic difficulty could in fact be a

judgment of phonological ill-f ormedness : one configuration of seg-

ments might be judged by subjects as harder to articulate than

another when the actual difficulty is due to the violation of lan-

guage-specific phonological rules, constraints on derivations, re-

strictions on underlying representations, or the like.

We argued that familiarity/unfamiliarity had no bearing on

the results in T2 and T3, though it may have influenced responses

to Tl. In T2 and T3 only nonsense forms were used, so that all

forms were unfamiliar to our subjects.

The objection that our subjects might have been judging

phonological ill-formedness rather than phonetic difficulty seems

to us to be misleadingly formulated. As we commented earlier,

articulatory difficulty is not inconsistent with phonological ill-for-

medness : articulatory difficulty could certainly arise due to phono-

logical ill-formedness of some kind. However, our claims in the

present study do not depend on the mutual exclusivity of diffi-

culty and ill-formedness. We have simply shown that the results

of difficulty testing unexpectedly include as a subset the complex

phonological patterning found by M&I in Japanese, and yet extend

to another language in which this patterning could not have arisen

by the mechanism M&I propose. The possibility still exists that

the patterning in both Japanese and Spanish is caused by some

other, yet unidentified, phonological mechanism or mehanisms pre-

sent in both languages, but our point is that whatever this mecha-

nism might be, it is surely not the one M&I suggested for Japanese

since that mechanism is not available in Spanish.

We are thus using difficulty judgments negatively to argue

against the M&I proposal and have not attempted to say in a

positive way what in fact caused the patterning in the two lan-

guages in question. Our claim is that both Spanish and Japanese speakers palatalize reduplicatives the way they do due to diffi-


culties they experience in pronouncing these combinations, but we

have not attempted to specify, except in a negative way, the ulti-

mate nature of these difficulties. They might finally need to be

described as due to physiological incapacities, or these incapacities

themselves might be expressed by natural processes of the type

proposed by Stampe and Donegan (1979), or the difficulties might

even arise due to ill-formedness attributable to the operation of "ordinary "learned phonological rules which have no physiological

motivation. What is clear, however, is that they do not arise as

M&I say they do.

(ii) VARIABILITY. It might be feared that judgments of

phonetic difficulty, since they are unlikely to be categorical, will

give rise to questions of interpretation : what does one say about

native speakers who disagree about the comparative difficulty of

two forms? Phonological argumentation is not usually based on

statistical tendencies. Here we must first remark that the results

of psychological response testing are never categorical: subjects

differ in attentiveness to a given task or in their skillfulness in

performing it; they may fail to indicate their responses accurately

on the test sheet ; they may lose track of the instructions given

at the beginning of the test ; and so on. What is remarkable in

the present case is not that there are almost always exceptions,

but that in some cases responses are virtually, or completely, unani-

mous (e.g. T2 z-r 1-138 and the 0-139 result for syaka vs. syakya).

Such results indicate that difficulty judgments can be very reliable

indeed and suggest that when responses are more seriously skewed

(e.g. T2 P-m 31-108) the disagreement probably reflects a lesser difference in the degree to which one form is perceived as more

difficult than the other.

There is, of course, no guarantee that all difficulty testing

will yield results as clear as those obtained in T2. It is likely

that informants are unable to make very fine discriminations of


difficulty, or that testing such differences would require statistical

evaluation of responses by extremely large numbers of subjects.

But discriminations of such delicacy are, in any event, unlikely to

be related to forces which play an important role in shaping the

basic regularities in a language.

(iii) RELEVANCE. It may be felt that difficulty judg-

ments, even if valid and statistically reliable, can have no clear

bearing on phonological argumentation.

To be meaningful, such an objection must be considered in

relation to particular analyses. Our argument in the present paper

is essentially of a traditional kind. In pointing out the parallel

between the testing responses of Japanese and Spanish speakers,

we simply note that M&I have missed a generalization : two sepa-

rate explanations for the intricate near-identical palatalization pat-

terning in Japanese and Spanish are required if M&I's analysis of

Japanese is adopted, since their analysis cannot be extended to

Spanish. In view of this, and especially in view of the intricacy

of the patterning involved, and in view of the further problems

pointed out in S. 3. 4 above, we do not see how the M&I analysis can be accepted.

5. GEMINATION. As we pointed out earlier (S. 2. 1), M&I see

nongemination of r as evidence for the underspecification of r on

which their proposal is based. Although this point does not bear

directly on our argument based on articulatory difficulty in S. 3, it does affect the status of M&I's overall argument. We therefore

now examine this subsidiary claim in some detail.

M&I note that gemination takes two general forms in the in-

tensive adverb template. Total gemination occurs in forms like

pattari 'unexpectedly' and gakkari 'disappointed'. Other consonants exhibit partial gemination, as illustrated by the forms in (5):14)

14) Hamano points out (1986: 139) that there are only about 15 such forms in the language.


(5) syoNbori < syobbori < syobo 'lonely'

uNzari < uzzari < uza 'bored, disappoited'

boNyari < boyyari < boya 'vague'

fuNwari < fuwwari < fuwa 'light' The moraic nasal in the forms in (5) is realized as homorga-

nic to the following obstruent or, before the glides y and w, as a

nasalized approximant. M&I derive forms like those in (5) from

intermediate geminates (see 275) and claim that r is the only

consonant which appears neither as a surface geminate nor as a

partial geminate.

M&I account for the exceptionality of r with respect to gemi-

nation with a combination of three premises (276) :

(i) the underspecified character of r ;

(ii) the Nasal Coda Restriction, requiring all voiced or so-

norant codas in Japanese to be nasal ;

(iii) the double linking of the medial consonant as a charac-

teristic property of the intensive adverb template.

They claim that total gemination of r is ruled out by (ii) and

partial gemination by a combination of (i) and (iii). Specifical-ly, partial gemination is ruled out because `the underspecified r

has no distinguishable parts available for separate linkage' (276).

The particular missing part in question is the place specification

of r, without which double linkage cannot occur (see Clements

1985 on double linkage).

M&I do not place much confidence in this argument, nor in

their other two arguments for the underspecification of r (i.e. the

arguments based on the fact that r is the only liquid in Japanese,

and the possibly epenthetic appearance of r in the verbal para-

digm ; see S. 2. 1 above) allowing (276) that all three arguments

are 'controvertible', but they maintain that in combination the three

arguments 'lend credibility' to the underspecification of r.

We do not, of course, dispute that r is the only liquid in


Japanese, though we, like M&I, have our doubts that this neces-

sarily implies the underspecification of r in underlying representa-

tions. The uniqueness of r as a liquid only implies r's under-

specification in conjunction with the assumption of underspecifica-

tion, the validity of which is, at least in part, what is at issue.

We also share with M&I doubts about the possible epenthesis of

r in the verbal paradigm, since, as they point out, there are

problems with this (see S. 2. 1 above). The argument from absence of geminate r in the intensive adverb template is, on its surface,

the strongest of the three independent arguments M&I provide

for underspecification of r.

The argument, however, appears to be based on an incorrect

generalization. M&I claim (following Hamano 1986: 26), that r cannot be geminated in Japanese (275). Reduplicative mimetics

serving as resultative adverbials have, however, a common intensive

form in which the second consonant in the first bisyllable is gemi-

nated, as in kutta-kuta 'exhausted' (<kuta-kuta) (Tamori 1984: 57-8).

As seen in examples like those in (6), geminate r does occur in

such intensives :15)

(6) barra-bara 'in disorder' (<bara-bara)

borro-boro 'worn out (shoes)' (<boro-boro)

gurra-gura 'shaky' (<gura-gura)

karra-kara 'dry' (<kara-kara)

perra pera 'thin' (<era-,sera) Adjectives occur in an emphatic form in which the second

consonant is geminated and the following vowel lengthened, as in

naggaai 'long' (<nagai). Here again we find geminate r:

(7) furruui 'old' (< furui) hirrooi 'spacious' (<hiroi)

15) Many reduplicative mimetics serving as manner adverbials also have an intensive form, e. g. bara-barat-to 'scattering' (<bara-bara) .

See fn.3 above.

138 Lawrence SCHOURUP, Ikuhiro TAMORi

karraai 'hot (food)' (<karai)

kurraai 'dark' (<kurai)

zurruui 'sly' (<zurui)

The segments w and y also allow full gemination, as the forms

kowwaai 'dreadful' (<kowai) and buyyo-buyo 'flabby' (<buyo-buyo)

show.

Since geminate r does occur in Japanese intensive adverbs,

nongemination of r may not be cited as evidence for the under-

specification of r in underlying representations in Japanese.16) We

see no motivated way to explain nongemination of r in the ri

forms based on underspecification of r while at the same time al-

lowing geminate r in the intensive forms in (6) and (7).

6. NONMIMETIC REDUPLICATIONS. Our proposal predicts that

if there are nonmimetic CVCV reduplications in Japanese, when

such forms contain palatalization. the distribution of the palatali-

zed consonants should be like that in mimetic reduplications. We

know of 18 such forms in Japanese, listed in (8). We include

both automatic and nonautomatic palatalizations, since T1 provi-

ded evidence that these two types of palatalization pattern in the

same way.

(8) gisyi-gisyi 'a sorrel'

hatyi-hatyi 'game of flower cards'

ketyi-ketyi 'stingy'

matyi-matyi 'divergent'

mityi-mityi 'on the way'

mosyi-mosyi 'excuse me, hello'

myaku-myaku 'continuous, unbroken'

nityi-nityi 'every day, daily'

notyi-notyi 'the distant future, after ages'

16) The segment h also does not geminate with ri (see Hamano 1986: 26), but does occur in borrowings: bahha 'Bach', gohho '(van) Gogh'.


syaku-syaku 'ample, more than enough'

syibu-syibu 'reluctantly'

syime-syime 'I've got it!'

syira-syira-ake 'daybreak, dawn'

syizu-syizu 'quietly, gently, softly'

syoku-syoku-do: butsu `herbivorous animal'

syuku-syuku 'silently, solemnly'

tyaku-tyaku 'steadily'

zyaku-zyaku 'quiet and lonely'

In this list there is only one potentially exceptional item.

Syizu-syizu `quietly' violates (2-II) CORONAL DEXTRALITY AND

DOMINANCE. But note that in T2 responses to s-z were seri-

ously skewed (96-43) with a large number of subjects responding

that palatalization on the second consonant was more difficult

than palatalization on the first. The form syizu-syizu is not, then,

a clear exception to the more detailed difficulty patterning we

found in T2. M&I, on the other hand, cannot account in their

proposals for the fact that palatalization in the forms in (8) pat-

terns in the same way as palatalization in mimetic reduplications.

We note in this regard that M&I do not regard reduplication as

relevant to the restrictions in (2) ; what is important in their ana-

lysis is the configuration of the root to which the palatalization

morpheme * is attached. * is, however, clearly not present in the

words in (8). Here again, M&I have missed a generalization.

7. THE RELEVANCE OF REDUPLICATION. In the analysis

proposed by M&I, reduplication plays no role at all. They view

the restrictions in (2), including rhotic exclusion, as restrictions

on the placement of palatalization within mimetic roots. The dif-

ficulty we believe to be involved in our informants' judgments,

however, is difficulty in the repetition of certain bimoraic CVCV

structures. The CVCV structures in question, even when corre-


sponding to starred shapes in (3), are not prohibitively difficult to

pronounce by themselves, as the fact that forms with these shapes

actually occur in Japanese attests. (Recall that many such forms

were used in the pairs in T1.) Thus we presume that we are

dealing, in the case of the disfavored combinations in our diffi-

culty testing, with sound combinations that are relatively easy to

pronounce but hard to repeat.17)

That articulatory difficulties can arise under repetition is

demonstrated by the existence of tongue twisters which rely for

their difficulty on repetitions of words or phrases which are, by

themselves, easy to pronounce. The phrase unique New York, for

example, is easy to say once, but when repeated quickly, gives

rise to insurmountable pronunciation difficulties. Some repetition-

based twisters produce unwanted regularization of aperiodic pat-

terns (in the case of unique New York, the mirror-image pattern

[y-n-n-y] regularizes to [y-n-y-n] or [n-y-n-y]), while others produce

unwanted segmental simplifications, as occurs when the word Sasha

is rapidly repeated and becomes [sasa]. Such difficulties, discus-

sed in Schourup 1973, may be due to physiological incapacity, or,

indirectly, to phonological processes based on such incapacities.

The tasks in our testing may be thought of as generating repeti-

tion-based tongue twisters experimentally. The starred combina-

tions in (3) are missing among Japanese mimetic reduplications,

we suggest, because Japanese speakers would be forever stumbling

over them if they did occur, or having to slow down to pronounce

them. This would also, of course, explain why nonmimetic redu-

plications in Japanese also respect the restrictions in (2), despite

the fact that such reduplications contain CVCV roots which are

common elsewhere as free morphemes in the language.

17) The uncommonness of such forms may indicate that even nonredu-

plicated roots of starred shape are mildly difficult, and suggests that reduplication then merely exacerbates the difficulty.


Obviously further illumination of this matter would require

large-scale testing of CVCV and other repetitions by speakers of a

wider range of languages. Alternatively, reduplications could be

compared cross-linguistically to see if certain combinations are

strongly disfavored or entirely ruled out in all languages. This

work would be complicated, of course, by the fact that segments

differ in articulation from language to language; direct comparisons

would not always be possible. However, our success in comparing

Japanese and Spanish-speaking informants suggests that this problem

might be less serious than it at first seems. A cross-linguistic

comparison of reduplications would almost certainly lead to inter-

esting conclusions about the limits of the human speech capacity.

8. NONMIMETIC r. While we have not proposed a highly

specific replacement for the analysis given by M&I, and have only

shown that their treatment is inadequate in several respects and

that what is needed is an explanation which makes crucial re-

ference to reduplication, we would point out that our account does

meet the condition which M&I set for any alternative explanation

of the distributional facts regarding Japanese palatalization in mi-

metics : it accounts for the exclusion of ry from mimetics while

at the same time allowing ry to occur freely elsewhere in the

vocabulary of Japanese, even in reduplications of Sino-Japanese

origin."' In our view ry is missing from mimetics for two inde-

pendent reasons : in the second syllable of CVCV reduplications

it is ruled out due to articulatory difficulty, as shown by T2; in

the first syllable of such reduplications its absence is due primarily

to the absence of r itself in that position. In our treatment ry is

free to occur in nonmimetic forms because such forms are rarely

18) Thus we find ryoo-ryoo 'rugged,' ryoo-ryoo 'both', ryoo-ryoo 'rare', ryuu-ryuu 'prosperous', ryuu-ryuu 'assiduously', and ryuu-ryuu-to

'thrust and withdraw'.


reduplicative : the restrictions on placement of ry concern CVCV

reduplications or repetitions, wherever in the vocabulary these

may occur, and not unitary occurrences of CVCV. We would not

expect ry to occur in nonmimetic reduplications in C2 position,

and it does not.

9. IIAMANO'S RESTRICTIONS. We interpret our experimental

results to mean that the generalizations in (2) first proposed by

Hamano and reinterpreted by M&I are descriptively correct as

they apply to occurring mimetic forms in Japanese but in fact

represent only a subset of the restrictions on the placement of

palatalization in Japanese. The full set of restrictions applies across the entire vocabulary of Japanese and also to nonoccurrent

nonsense forms; that is, the restrictions apply to the sequential

repetition of all bimoraic CVCV sound combinations in Japanese

regardless of their morphological status.

The partialness of the restrictions is seen, for example, in the

T2 results for pairs including tyana. Bimorae with t-n do not

happen to occur among Japanese mimetic reduplications, but al-

though tyana-tyana would violate generalization (2-II), it is not

difficult for native speakers of Japanese to repeat tyana, and tyana-

tyana is readily judged to be a possible but nonoccurrent form, a

lexical gap. But tanya-tanya, although it is allowable by generali-

zation (2-II) is judged by speakers to be an impossible form,

and, correspondingly, tanya is rated more difficult than tyana in

the T2 repetitions.

10. CONCLUSION. Our general conclusion is that the pat-

terning under consideration here offers no support for the Theory

of Restricted Underspecification. It is clear that underspecification

of r, even if it were well-established in Japanese, is not responsi-

ble for rhotic exclusion and that mechanisms of much greater


generality are at work.

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日本語の硬口蓋化と制限的不完全指定理論

ローレンス･スコウラップ (大阪女子大学)

田守育啓 (神戸商科大学)

音韻素性のうち余剰的なものだけが基底表示で指定する必要がないとする理論

(制限的不完全指定(Restricted Underspecification》に関して, Mester and

It6(1989)は,日本語の擬音･擬態語における硬ロ蓋化を示す自律分節形態素の

分布パターンが,その理論を支持する強力な証拠を呈すると主張している｡M&1

の主張は,日本語の擬音･擬態語における/r/が硬ロ蓋化されないということに

決定的に依存している｡我々は,日本語の擬音･擬態語における/r/を含む硬口

蓋化の分布が,二音節の反復形を調音する際の難易度から予測できるということ

を実験的証拠を提示して示す｡当該硬口蓋化の分布の規則性は,正しく記述され

れば,擬音･擬態語だけでなく日本語の語彙全般に当てはまり,日本語以外に,

硬口蓋化が自律分節形態素ではないスペイン語にも当てはまることを示す｡素性

の不完全指定は,制限的であるかどうかにかかわらず,日本語の擬音･擬態語に

おける硬口蓋化の分布を記述するのに不必要であり,不完全指定に基づくM&1

の分析は不十分で必然性がない｡

(原稿論文受理日 1991年12月25日)

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JAPANESE PALATALIZATION IN RELATION TO THEORIES OF