Voicing in Japanese

This book presents a number of studies which focus on the [voice] grammar of Japanese, paying particular attention to historical background, dialectal diversity, phonetic experiment, and phonological analysis. Both voicing processes in consonants (such as Sequential Voicing, or Rendaku) and vowels (such as vowel devoicing) are examined.

A number of new analyses are presented, focusing on well-known data that have been controversial in phonological debate in the past, but also presenting new (or rediscovered) data, partly through the work of Japanese scholars that hitherto went mostly unnoticed, partly through new database research, and partly through phonetic experiment.

Jeroen van de Weijer is Lecturer in linguistics at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He specialises in phonological theory, especially with regard to segmental representation and with a keen interest in laryngeal features.

Kensuke Nanjo is Associate Professor of Phonetics at St. Andrew’s University, Osaka, Japan. His interests include English and Japanese phonetics and phonology, lexicography, accents of English, and the acquisition of English by Japanese learners.

Tetsuo Nishihara is Lecturer of English at the Miyagi University of Education, Sendai, Japan with a particular interest in English and Japanese phonology, especially with regard to prosodic phonology and phonology-morphology interaction.