How Does Structure Affect Surface Rule Application?: Accent and Verbal Morphology in Japanese Deverbal (Noun) Compounds

How Does Structure Affect Surface Rule Application?: Accent and Verbal Morphology in Japanese Deverbal (Noun) Compounds Yu Tomita Universität Leipzig, Germany yt44kiry@studserv.uni-leipzig.de Abstract This paper investigates deverbal com- pounds in Japanese. Previous stud- ies have discussed the classification of deverbal compounds, which can be classified according to their structure. Some former investigations discovered some generalizations on accents, ren- daku, and direct verbalization. Here I propose a generalization on direct ver- balization and deaccentuation, combin- ing two previous generalizations. I also suggest that some deverbal compounds do not have accents due to a functional head, realized as a phonological floating feature on (de)accentuation, by utiliz- ing the Distributed Morphology (DM) framework. 1 Introduction Here I investigate morphological and phono- logical aspects of Japanese deverbal (noun) compounds¹. These deverbal compounds con- sist of two components: non-head element (dependent) and verb-infinitive noun head ¹Here, I use the term deverbal (noun) compounds as referring to compounds of some word and a dever- bal noun, setting aside the similar term synthetic com- pounds, which is generally understood to mean more specific compounds consisting of a noun and a (transi- tive) verb. (base verb), where the base verb stands for a vowel-final verb stem or consonant-final verb stem followed by the suffix -i (conjugation form)². For example, (1a) and (1c) consist of the dependent and the consonant-final base verb kir, whereas (1b) consists of a dependent azi and a vowel-final base verb tuke. (1) a. hará berry + kirí cutting → harakirí ‘suicide with a sword’ b. azi taste + tuké adding → ajituke ‘seasoning’ c. ne price + kirí cutting → negiri ‘discounting’ d. usu thin + kirí cutting → usugiri ‘cutting into thin pieces’ e. kuruma car + tome stopping → kurumadome ‘roadblock’ As shown in (1c–1e), NV compounds can un- dergo sequential voicing (rendaku). As well ²In this paper, I employ the Japanese system of Ro- manization instead of phonetically rigorous transcrip- tion. See Yamaguchi (2014), e.g., for detail. as other NN compounds, NV compounds gen- erally obey (Motoori-)Lyman’s law. (2) (Motoori-)Lyman’s Law (Lyman 1894): in a compound noun, if the second constituent contains voiced obstruent, it bleeds rendaku. Semantically, these compounds denote vari- ous entities and eventualities. For instance, harakiri means an event of committing sui- cide, whereas kurumadome denotes some en- tity. These compounds behave as N(P)s but partially have verbal properties. Moving on to the verbal properties of deverbal compounds, some of them can be used like a verb with the light verb suru, as shown in (3a–3d). (3) a. Syogun-wa general-TOP hara-kiri(-o) berry-cutting(-ACC) sita did ‘A shogun committed a suicide.’ b. Yiding-wa Y-TOP banana-ni azi-tuke(-o)banana-DAT taste-adding(-ACC) suru do.PRES ‘Yiding flavors banana.’ c. Elin-wa E-TOP kagu-o furniture-ACC ne-giri(*-o) price-cutting(-ACC) suru do.PRES ‘Elin haggles furniture.’ d. Lukas-wa L-TOP niku-o meat-ACC sen-giri(-ni/*o) thousand-cutting(-DAT/ACC) suru do.PRES ‘Lukas shreds meat.’ e. * Mary-wa M-TOP kurumadome(-o) car-stopping(-ACC) suru do.PRES Intended: ‘Mary parks.’ However, other deverbal compounds which only denote entities or resultant of events (re- sult nominals, Grimshaw 1990) cannot be used like a verb, …

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