Overview

How diverse can a single language family’s prosody be? Word-Prosodic Systems of Japonic Languages answers this by offering the first-ever comparative overview in English of the highly diverse word-prosodic systems of the Japonic languages. Through accessible descriptions couched in a unified framework, this volume dismantles long-standing barriers in a field whose publications are almost exclusively in Japanese and whose descriptive tradition is shaped by idiosyncratic terminology and theory. Covering nine Japanese and eight Ryukyuan varieties, and featuring the definitive typological introduction to Japonic prosody, the book reveals surprising typological facts—such as systems that require positing novel prosodic units. It is essential reading for linguists interested in prosody, typology, and the often-overlooked diversity of East Asian languages.

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9789004755369

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Yosuke Igarashi, Ph. D. (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2005) is a professor at NINJAL specializing in Japonic phonetics, prosody, and historical linguistics, with publications in Lingua, JASA, Cognition, and other journals. Kenan Celik, Ph.D. (Kyoto University, 2020), is a project assistant professor at NINJAL. He has published on Southern Ryukyuan prosody and co-edited a dictionary of the Tarama variety of Southern Ryukyuan Miyako (NINJAL, 2020). Tatsuya Hirako, Ph. D. (Kyoto University, 2015), is an associate professor at Nanzan University. He studies Japanese dialects from descriptive and historical perspectives and has published a chapter in a volume from Brill’s Endangered and Lesser-Studied Languages and Dialects series. Hayato Aoi, Ph.D. (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2016), is a project assistant professor at TUFS. His research focuses on Ryukyuan phonetics and phonology, with recent interests in the history of Japanese phonetic and phonological studies.

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