UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The sound pattern of Japanese surnames A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by Yu Tanaka 2017 ⃝c Copyright by Yu Tanaka 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The sound pattern of Japanese surnames by Yu Tanaka Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Kie Ross Zuraw, Co-chair Professor Bruce P. Hayes, Co-chair Compound surnames in Japanese show complex phonological patterns, which pose challenges to current theories of phonology. This dissertation proposes an account of the segmental and prosodic issues in Japanese surnames and discusses their theoretical implications. Like regular compound words, compound surnames may undergo a sound alternation known as rendaku, whereby the initial consonant of the second element becomes voiced (e.g. /yama + ta/ ! [yama-da] ‘mountain-paddy’). The voicing alternation in surnames is somewhat different from that in regular compounds, however; its application is often affected by the features of the last consonant of the first element. Surnames also show unique prosodic patterns, which include an inverse correlation between accentedness and rendaku application. Although the peculiarities of surnames have been noted in the literature (see Sugito 1965 among others), no study has ever provided a full description or explanation of the patterns. The first goal of the dissertation is to account for why compound surnames are different from regular compounds in terms of rendaku application and accentuation. I claim that compound surnames are represented as single stems in the grammar due to their semantic non-compositionality and that their peculiar phonological patterns can be attributed to the application of stem-internal phonology. I present the results of a corpus study of existing surnames collected from social media, and a rendaku judgment experiment using nonce surnames. ii Both studies support the hypothesis that compound surnames follow the phonology of stems. The analysis opens a new way to investigate the sound patterns of proper nouns in general. Rendaku in surnames poses another theoretical problem since it exhibits both lexical irregu- larities and phonologically-conditioned productivity. The experimental results show that Japanese speakers apply rendaku productively based on phonological factors. However, a closer look at the patterns of real surnames indicates that rendaku is also highly lexicalized; besides phonological factors, the presence of voicing in a given surname is determined by the idiosyncratic properties of that surname. The challenge of capturing the lexicalized and productive aspects of a phonological phenomenon with a single grammar has been recognized but not always addressed in the literature (see Zuraw 2000; Moore-Cantwell and Pater 2016). To meet this challenge, I propose a Maximum Entropy Harmonic Grammar model (see Goldwater and Johnson 2003) with general phonological constraints and lexically-specific con- straints along the lines of Moore-Cantwell and Pater (2016). I show that the proposed model with appropriate biases on the learning of constraint weights can not only capture the lexical- ized rendaku patterns of existing surnames but also predict productive rendaku application in non- existing surnames. The analysis suggests that lexical factors should be incorporated into phono- logical grammar rather than simply specified in the lexicon. iii The dissertation of Yu Tanaka is approved. Junko Ito Megha Sundara Bruce P. Hayes, Committee Co-chair Kie Ross Zuraw, Committee Co-chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv いろはにほへと ちりぬるを わかよたれそ つねならむ うゐのおくやま けふこえて あさきゆめみし ゑひもせす v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 1 1.1 Issues . 1 1.1.1 Peculiar rendaku and accent patterns in surnames . 1 1.1.2 The coexistence of lexicalization and productivity . 2 1.2 Preview of the proposals . 3 1.2.1 Representation: A stem composed of stems . 3 1.2.2 Grammar: A Maximum Entropy model with lexically-specific constraints . 4 1.3 Notation and a sketch of Japanese phonology . 4 1.3.1 Notes on transcriptions . 4 1.3.2 Segments: Phoneme inventory . 5 1.3.3 Prosody: Pitch accent . 6 2 Data: Rendaku and accent in Japanese surnames ::::::::::::::::::: 8 2.1 Chapter overview . 8 2.2 Background . 8 2.2.1 Rendaku and lexical propensities . 8 2.2.2 Lyman’s Law and its role in the lexicon . 11 2.2.3 Compound surnames and rendaku . 12 2.2.4 Summary . 14 2.3 Segmental factors . 14 2.3.1 Strong Lyman’s Law? . 14 2.3.2 Peculiarity of /k/ in the first element . 17 vi 2.3.3 Other patterns: Sonorants in E1 . 19 2.3.4 Summary of segmental factors . 22 2.4 Prosodic factors . 22 2.4.1 Accent patterns of names . 22 2.4.2 Rendaku-accent correlation . 25 2.4.3 The length of elements . 28 2.4.4 Summary of prosodic factors . 32 2.5 Lexical propensities . 33 2.5.1 Lexical propensities of E2 . 33 2.5.2 Lexical propensities of compounds . 35 2.5.3 Summary of lexical propensities . 35 2.6 The phonological status of rendaku in surnames . 36 2.6.1 History of rendaku application . 37 2.6.2 History of Japanese surnames . 41 2.6.3 Not merely a historical vestige . 44 2.6.4 Productivity and predictability . 47 2.6.5 Summary . 48 2.7 Chapter summary . 49 3 Proposal and analyses: Rendaku and accent under stem phonology ::::::::: 50 3.1 Chapter overview . 50 3.2 Proposal . 50 3.2.1 Non-compositionality of surnames . 50 3.2.2 Recursive stems and stem-phonology . 53 3.3 Analysis: Deriving segmental factors . 54 vii 3.3.1 Stem-bounded Lyman’s Law blocks rendaku: The law is not strong . 54 3.3.2 Identity Avoidance triggers rendaku: /k/ is not peculiar . 56 3.3.3 Identity Avoidance as a blocker: Labial cooccurrence restriction . 59 3.3.4 Notes on Identity Avoidance in regular compounds . 60 3.3.5 E1-nasals: Lack of Identity Avoidance and expanded stem-phonology . 64 3.3.6 E1-approximants /w/ and /y/: Neutral consonants . 68 3.3.7 E1-approximant /r/: Inferred phonotactics *rVD . 69 3.3.8 Why rendaku in a surname?: [+voice]< and REALIZEMORPHEME ..... 73 3.3.9 Summary . 75 3.4 Analysis: Deriving prosodic factors . 76 3.4.1 Predictability of accent location: Default antepenultimate . 76 3.4.2 Antepenultimacy and unaccentedness in stems: Ito and Mester (2016) . 78 3.4.3 Stem grammar applied to compound surnames: Default antepenultimacy . 85 3.4.4 Deriving the rendaku-accent correlation . 88 3.4.5 Deriving the five common accent patterns . 96 3.4.6 Deriving rarer patterns: E2-specific constraints . 100 3.4.7 Summary . 111 3.5 Remarks on other patterns . 111 3.5.1 Remarks on E1 and E2 length effects . 111 3.5.2 Remarks on lexical propensities . 112 3.6 Chapter summary . 113 4 Corpus study and experiment ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 114 4.1 Chapter overview . 114 4.2 A corpus study: Rendaku in existing surnames in social media . 114 viii 4.2.1 The aims of the study . 115 4.2.2 Methods . 116 4.2.3 Predictions . 123 4.2.4 Results . 125 4.2.5 A comparison with rendaku in regular compounds . 136 4.2.6 Summary of the corpus study . 140 4.3 Experiment: Rendaku judgment in non-existing surnames . 140 4.3.1 The aim of the experiment: Testing productivity . 141 4.3.2 Methods . 142 4.3.3 Predictions . 149 4.3.4 Results . 149 4.3.5 Discussion: A comparison to the corpus data . 154 4.3.6 Summary of the experiment . 160 4.4 Chapter summary . 161 4.5 Appendix . 162 5 Grammar: A MaxEnt model with lexically-specific constraints :::::::::::: 164 5.1 Chapter overview . 164 5.2 A challenge: Modeling lexicalization and productivity . 164 5.3 The grammar model . 168 5.3.1 MaxEnt grammar . 168 5.3.2 General constraints . 172 5.3.3 Lexically-specific constraints . 178 5.3.4 Implementing learning biases . 183 5.3.5 Summary . 185 ix 5.4 Testing the model . 186 5.4.1 Predicting rendaku in real surnames . 186 5.4.2 Predicting rendaku in nonce surnames . 190 5.4.3 The role of lexically-specific constraints and biases . 195 5.4.4 Summary of the results . 197 5.5 General discussion . 198 5.6 Chapter summary . 201 6 Conclusion ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 202 6.1 Summary of the dissertation . 202 6.2 Implications for phonological theory . 203 x LIST OF FIGURES 4.1 Average rendaku rates by E1-obstruent voicing and E2-obstruent place (corpus) . 125 4.2 Average rendaku rates by E1-E2 voiceless obstruent combinations (corpus) . 126 4.3 Average rendaku rates.