This study aims at investigating how Japanese compound accent rules (CAR) are acquired by native Japanese children. To better understand CAR acquisition, this study compares CAR acquisition in two dialects which vary according to compound accents: Tokyo Japanese and Kyoto Japanese. Our results reveal following points: 1) Both Tokyo and Kyoto children tended to produce the pattern in which the nonfinal foot of the compound is accented more frequently than any of the other CA patterns. This finding agrees with the universal constraint-hierarchy of Optimality Theory. 2) Kyoto children showed the tendency to use the nonfinal-footed accent at a later developmental stage than the Tokyo children. The complex accent system of Kyoto Japanese may prevent the universal characteristic from emerging at an early stage of acquisition.
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