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The Roles of Internal and External Factors and the Mechanism Of The Roles of Internal and External Factors and the Mechanism of Analogical Leveling: Variationist- and Probabilistic OT approach to Ongoing Language Change in Japanese Voice System by Shin-ichiro SANO M.A. Linguistics Sophia University, 2005 SUBMITTED TO THE DIVISION OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS AT SOPHIA UNIVERSITY TOKYO, JANUARY 2009 ii © Copyright by Shin-ichiro Sano 2009 All Rights Reserved iii Abstract This thesis presents an exhaustive research about ongoing language variation and change in the Japanese voice system. Through the analysis I identify the roles of internal and external factors in human linguistic competence that govern the language variation and change, and I construct a model of grammar that inherently includes the language variation and change. This work aims at the formal theoretical analysis primarily built upon the empirical evidence: a huge amount of spontaneous speech data. Until now, a number of researches on language variation and change have been done from various perspectives: The sociolinguistic research, specifically from the perspective of the variationist approach (Labov 1963 et seq., Weinreich et al. 1968), has revealed much about language variation and change, particularly with respect to phonological aspects, focusing on various internal and external factors that govern the phenomena by the quantitative method. However, the formalization of the mechanism of language variation and change is insufficient; the generative grammatical approach (Chomsky 1957) can give a formal account of the phenomena based on the grammatical theory. However, this approach has focused on the language competence as the research subject, and the language use has been overlooked. Thus, the approaches have not cooperated and have not shared their insights. In the grammatical category voice in Japanese, language variation and change which reorganize the conjugation paradigm are currently underway. The process includes three variations: sa-Insertion, ra-Deletion and re-Insertion. The variation and change in voice are related to the functional demand and to morphophonology. Based on these facts, I conducted the research from the perspectives of a variationist approach (Labov 1963 et seq.; Weinreich et al. 1968), and also Optimality Theory (henceforth OT; Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004), specifically the iv Probabilistic OT (e.g. Boersma 1998; Boersma and Hayes 2001; Goldwater and Johnson 2003; Jäger 2004; Jäger and Rosenbach 2006), sharing the insights of both paradigms. I employ two large-scale Japanese corpora: the on-line full text databse of the minutes of the Diet and the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese, complementally taking advantage of the strong points of each corpus for the exhaustive research about language variation and change. The exhaustive research on the corpora brought forth the data which amounts to a total of over 20,000 tokens of the variations. Specifically, I conduct the quantitative analysis employing the spontaneous speech data and examine the roles of internal- and external factors that govern the language variation and change. The data are subject to the factor-by-factor analysis followed by the multivariate analysis. Subsequently, I conduct the grammatical analysis in terms of the Optimality Theory. I set several OT constraints, reinterpreting the results of the quantitative analysis. The Probabilistic OT analysis includes the prediction of the change and the verification of the analysis. Considering all the results together, I discuss the locus of variation in human language competence. In doing so, I uncover some detailed insights about the roles of internal and external factors and this in turn leads to the construction of a model of grammar that accommodates the inherent variability. In addition to the identification of the roles of factors and the construction of the model, I propose that the three variations are not discrete phenomena but a uniform and exhaustive one which is driven by the common demand for the optimization of the conjugation paradigm as well as the reduction of the functional load of each form in the Japanese voice system; the discrepancy in the manner of the change is derived according to the particular meanings or functions of each variation. I also show that the language variation and change in question can be explained by the interaction of a small set of constraints. v Acknowledgement First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my committee members: Kensaku Yoshida, Kenjiro Matsuda, Shin-ichi Tanaka, and Junko Hibiya. As a chief examiner, Ken Yoshida provided me with the precious opportunity for writing this dissertation in spite of many difficulties. Since I had entered graduate school, Ken Matsuda has always supported me both academically and nonacademically, at times with hobnobbing together, with his elaborated guidance, considerable encouragement and invaluable discussion that make my research into a great achievement and my study life unforgettable: He gave me a path which I should follow; he gave me a number of opportunities; his words always encouraged me. When I was depressed, he helped lift my spirits. Without Ken Matsuda’s help, I could not be a linguist. In his course, Shin-ichi Tanaka has taught me the essence of Optimality Theory. He has also provided me with a number of invaluable comments about my work since 2006. Junko Hibiya has taught me the basis of variationist approach. Her suggestions stimulated a number of ideas in my work including this dissertation. I also would like to express my deepest appreciation to my former advisor Naoki Fukui for his precise, practical, and insightful instruction and comments. He created my basis as a linguist either directly or indirectly: He taught me the professional manner as a researcher, scientific thinking and creation of wisdom. I also would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Frank Scott Howell for his help. He has taught me the essence of academic writing. I have accompanied him in his course, Scientific English, as a TA for two years. On that occasion, I have learned a lot of important points in academic writing. In spite of his busy schedule, he has always taken my request for the native check with good cheer, and has promptly completed each section. Without his help and kindness, I would never have completed my PhD work. I owe a very important vi debt to Shigeko Shinohara and Fumio Inoue for their support. The communication with Shigeko Shinohara enabled the deepening of my understanding of the current issues in Optimality Theory. Her suggestions and comments also made enormous contributions to my work. In his course, Fumio Inoue taught me the traditional dialectology and fieldwork in Japan. His entertaining talk along with insightful comments and discussions encouraged my understanding of the methods in sociolinguistics. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Takehiko Maruyama, Kikuo Maekawa, Yasuharu Den, Masaki Akimoto, and other colleagues of the National Institute of Japanese Language. In the Institute, I was exposed to the professional work with leading scholars and advanced research. The joint research with Takehiko Maruyama and communication with scholars helped me extend my knowledge about linguistics to the descriptive and empirical approach, corpus linguistics, and natural language processing. Takehiko Maruyama led me with enthusiasm in all aspects. Masaki Akimoto took care of me especially after hours. Undoubtedly, the experience in the Institute tremendously developed my research capacities and extended the possibility of my work. I am also in debt to the Participants of LSA 2007: Satoshi Nambu, David Oshima, Tomohide Kinuhata, Chris Davis, Izumi Ochiai, NG Monica and other colleagues, and also Masahiro Yamada for their helpful comments and discussions. I had a great time with them. My deepest appreciation goes to Joan Bresnan, Arto Anttila, Paul Kiparsky, and Gregory Guy for their invaluable help, suggestions and comments both during and after the institute. The communication with all of them broadened the horizons of my work and injected some fresh air into my research. Their suggestions and comments stimulated parts of the ideas in this dissertation. I am also grateful to my Colleagues of Sophia University’s department of vii linguistics, especially Daigo Akiba, Emi Fukasawa, and the members of Sophia Phonetics Lab. and to the director of the Lab, Tsutomu Sugawara. Tsutomu Sugawara gave me the opportunity of starting the MA program in linguistics at Sophia University. His kind attention always encourages every student of the department, including me. The Lab provided me with a good research environment and a nice circle of friends that made my life fruitful and invaluable. Parts of this thesis were presented at the Stanford Workshop on Variation, Gradience and Frequency in Phonology, the 17th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference and the 18th International Congress of Linguists. I would like to thank those who offered suggestions and comments. Finally, I would like to extend my indebtedness to my family members for their endless love, understanding, support, encouragement and sacrifice throughout my study. viii Contents 1. Introduction 1 PART I 2. Methodological preliminaries 12 2.1 Approaches to language variation and change 12 2.1.1 Variationist approach 12 2.1.2 Optimality-Theoretic approach 14 2.1.2.1 Basic concepts of Optimality Theory 15 2.1.2.2 Partial ordering model 17 2.1.2.3 Stochastic OT 19 2.1.2.4 Maximum Entropy OT 20 2.2 Variations in Japanese Voice 22 2.2.1 sa-Insertion 23 2.2.2 ra-deletion 28 2.2.3 re-Insertion 33 3. Data 38 3.1 Corpora 38 3.1.1 The Diet database 38 3.1.2 CSJ 40 3.2 The advantages of the complementary use of two corpora 41 3.3 The criteria for the data extraction 45 3.3.1 sa-Insertion 45 3.3.2 ra-Deletion 51 ix 3.3.3 re-Insertion 56 3.4 Factors 61 3.4.1 Diet database 61 3.4.2 CSJ 62 3.5 The collected data for the analysis 63 3.5.1 Diet database 63 3.5.2 CSJ 64 PART II 4.
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