Studies on Japanese Phonology in Optimality Theory

在这个研究项目中，我们在最优性理论的框架下研究了日语的名词结构，这是一种基于约束的语言学理论。我们主要关注以下四个主题：口音、词序和韵律结构、单词的音节结构和词典结构。我们对日语口音的分析表明，在某些口音规则中，省略元音的表现就好像它们不存在一样，而省略辅音的表现就好像它们存在一样。这种修饰元音和省略辅音的行为在基于约束的优化理论中很难解释，其中语法性被定义为输出结构的格式良好性。对语序与音位结构关系的研究揭示了以下三点。首先，构成复合名词语义词头的东西在音系上往往隶属于语义词头或修饰语。这似乎解释了许多语言的复合重音模式以及声调语言中无声调音节的行为。第二，同样的原则似乎也适用于日语的复合截断过程，在日语中，语义头往往被省略。第三，在某些情况下，[词头+修饰语]复合名词表现出不规则的措辞模式，而[修饰语+词头]复合名词则表现出规则的措辞模式。通过对音节结构的分析，我们发现日语的双音词表现出对重-轻结构的偏好，而不是轻-重结构。这种音节组织的不对称似乎出现在日语的各种现象中。最后，我们对词汇的分析表明，不同词汇阶层所表现出的不同语音模式可以在最优化理论的框架下得到适当的解释，即普遍约束和最小的重新排序。

In this research project, we studied the plonological structure of Japanese in the framework of Optimality Theory, a constaint-based linguistic theory. Our main focus was on the following four topics : accent, word order and plonological structure, syllable structure of words, and the structure of the lexicon.Our analysis of Japanese accent has revealed that epenthetic vowels behave as if they were absent and elided consonants behave as if they were present in some accent rules. This behavior of epenthetic vowels and elided consonants is difficult to explain in the constraint-based Optimality Theory, where grammaticality is defined as well-formedness on output structure.Research on the relationship between word order and phonological structure has revealed the following three points. First, what constitutes a semantic head in compound nouns tends to be phonologically subordinated to the semantic *on-head, or modifier. This seems to account for the compound accent patterns of many languages as well as the behavior of toneless syllables in tone languages. Second, the same principle seems to govern the compound truncation process in Japanese, where the semantic head tends to be omitted. Third, there are cases where [head+modifier] compound nouns exhibit an irregular phrasing pattern as opposed to [modifier+head] compounds, which exhibit a regular phrasing pattern.Our analysis of syllable structure has revealed that Japanese bisyllabic words display preference towards heavy-light structure as against light-heavy structure. This asymmetry in syllabic organization seems to appear in a variety of phenomena in Japanese.Finally, our analysis of the lexicon shows that different phonological patterns exhibited by different lexical strata can be properly accounted for in the framework of Optimality Theory, in terms of universal constraints and their minimal rerankings.