[PS-2.7] Divergence of negation morphology in Western Japanese dialects

Sato, Y. 1 & Koga, H. 2

1 Department of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, U.K.
2 Saga University, Japan

We argue that the sub-regional variations of negation morphology in the Western Japanese dialect are a result of an interaction of two mutually independent forces, one phonological and the other semantic, avoidance of ambiguity in particular. We focus on two forms of negation observed in this dialect, /n/ and /hen/, and show two examples the different distributions of which can be explained by such a mechanism. One example is the preference in the Shiga region for the /n/ form despite the shift to the /hen/ form in other regions. We relate this phenomenon to an assimilatory phonological process that alters /r/ preceding /n/ into the latter sound (e.g. /nage-ru/+/no/ -> /nage-n-no/ \'throw\'+Question), observed widely in Japanese but *not* in Shiga. If this process was allowed, a serious ambiguity would ensue for the /n/ form for many verbs: /nage-n-no/ could then be either affirmative or negative. As predicted by our hypothesis, this assimilation is indeed suppressed in Shiga, while the preference for the /hen/ form can be interpreted to have arisen to avoid this ambiguity. The other example is a phenomenon observed in Osaka, where a relatively new but increasingly dominant `potential\' (`can\') morphology, formed by adding the vowel /e/ to the stem, does *not* gain popularity in its negative form. This can be related to the separate phonological process unique to Osaka that the negative /hen/ suffix causes a vowel harmony in the stem, e.g. /ina-hen/ (`not leave\') -> /ine-hen/ (`not/cannot leave\'), causing ambiguity between the plain and potential readings. The dispreference can again be accounted for by the interaction between the disambiguatory pressure and a phonological process. More generally, we advocate a dialectal comparative approach to investigate morpho-phonological processes, since sub-regional morphological differences can be seen as a transitional stage where universal principles of morphological change are observable.