The Construction of Contrastive Focus Reduplication (CR) in Tokyo Japanese

要旨

The present paper examines the word formation process involved in Contrastive Focus Reduplication (CR) found in Tokyo Japanese – a reduplication process that narrows the possible semantic interpretations. While CR in Japanese can only be applied to nouns, the application of CR changes its grammatical category from a noun to either a verb or an adjective. These restrictions make it difficult to directly compare Japanese CR to those in other languages, such as English and German, to inspect whether previous accounts regarding the word formation made in other languages are also relevant in Japanese. That being said, this investigation uses the pitch accent system found in Japanese, which is noted to also indicate the morphological process involved in a word. Specifically focusing on the pitch accent rule of compounding, outlined by Kubozono (2023), it is revealed that CR also follows the same pitch accent patterns. While still addressing morpho-phonological factors such as blocking of rendaku (sequential-voicing), that differentiates CR from regular compounding, we argue here that the formation of CR in Japanese involves the process of compounding.

主題