Day 1 (Friday, December 11, 2026)
Haruo Kubozono (NINJAL)
What is so interesting about phonology?
In this lecture, I would like to look back on my 50-year career in research and ask myself what it is that makes phonology so interesting. The most fascinating aspect of phonology—and of science in general—concerns the notion of ‘generalization’, or the fact that phenomena which at first glance appear unrelated can be explained by a single, common rule or law. In this lecture, I will examine the following three specific issues as examples of generalization in phonology: (a) accent rules, (b) word shortening, and (c) prominence clash.
First, by employing the concept of ‘syllable weight’, we can generalize many accent rules in Tokyo Japanese and reveal the fundamental similarities between Japanese and Latin/English accentuation. Second, three phenomena that appear totally unrelated at first glance—word accent, word shortening, and baseball cheering chants—can be explained by the same underlying template. Finally, various phenomena observed in Japanese and other languages can be explained in a principled manner when analyzed from the perspective of ‘prominence clash’. This includes English ‘rhythm rule’, high-tone clash in Japanese dialects, as well as the prosodic asymmetries found in various phenomena in Japanese such as word shortening, zuuja-go, baby-talk words, and the naming of gengo (Japanese era names).
Yuta Tatsumi (Meikai University)
An Ordinal Scale Analysis of Temporal Measure Phrases in Japanese
Atsushi Oho (Otaru University of Commerce)
Classifiers for numerals or for nouns? In Japanese, structure decides
Numeral classifiers have been analyzed as supplying a measure function for numerals (classifiers for numerals) or as atomizing nouns (classifiers for nouns). Little, Moroney and Royer (2022) argue that no language has both, since the two semantics cannot compose within one nominal. I argue, however, that Japanese has both. If a classifier is for the numeral, its presence is expected to depend on the numeral; if for the noun, on the noun. In Japanese, both patterns occur: classifier omission is conditioned in some cases by the numeral and in others by the noun. I propose that structure decides which semantic function a given classifier can have: in the prenominal construction (numeral-classifier-GEN noun) it is for the numeral, and only in the postnominal construction (noun numeral-classifier) can it be for the noun. Indeed, numeral-conditioned omission is impossible postnominally, and noun-conditioned omission prenominally. Further support comes from zen 'all' and kaku 'each': having no numeral for a classifier to serve, they combine with a classifier as quantifiers only postnominally. Such data motivate the view that being for numerals or for nouns can be a property of structures rather than of languages.
Hijo Kang (Chonnam National University)
Motivations for Phonological Dissimilation: Cognitive vs. Articulatory Perspectives
Dissimilation is less frequent than assimilation, yet it is a well-documented phenomenon observed in historical change, synchronic alternation, and lexical constraints. Cognitive processes are widely cited as the primary driver of dissimilation. For instance, Ohala (1992) argues that dissimilation stems from listener hypercorrection: when listeners perceive similar acoustic signals in proximity, they misattribute them to coarticulatory effects and compensate for them in the phonological representation, which ultimately leads to dissimilation. While this cognitive account is broadly accepted (Kiparsky 2003; Blevins 2013; Frisch et al. 2004, among others), articulatory motivations have more recently been proposed (Walter 2007; Svantesson & Karlsson 2012; Begus 2016). This alternative view suggests that because the repetition of similar segments is articulatorily effortful, one of the segments may undergo reduction. In this presentation, I evaluate these two perspectives through experimental investigation. Drawing on production and perception experiments involving Korean stops and fricatives, I demonstrate that while there is little evidence for articulatory motivations, perception data reveals a form of ‘repetition deafness,’ suggesting a cognitive bias toward avoiding repetition.