Phonetic naturalness and unnaturalness in Japanese loanword phonology

摘要

This paper argues that phonetic naturalness and unnaturalness canninteract within a single grammatical system. In Japanese loanword phonology, onlynvoiced geminates, but not voiced singletons, devoice to dissimilate from anothernvoiced obstruent. The neutralizability difference follows from a ranking whichnJapanese speakers created on perceptual grounds: IDENT(voi)Sing » IDENT(voi)Gem.nOn the other hand, the trigger of devoicing—OCP(voi)—has no phonetic underpin-nning because voicing does not have phonetic characteristics that would naturally leadnto confusion-based dissimilation (Ohala, Proceedings of Chicago Linguistic Society:nPapers from the parasession on language and behaviour, 1981, in: Jones (ed.)nHistorical linguistics: Problems and perspectives, 1993). OCP(voi) in ModernnJapanese originated as a phonetically natural OCP(prenasal) in Old Japanese becausenthe spread out heavy nasalization would lead to perceptual confusion, but it divorcednfrom its phonetic origin when prenasalization became voicing. The interaction of thenthree constraints in Modern Japanese suggests that phonetic naturalness (the rankingnIDENT(voi)Sing » IDENT(voi)Gem) and unnaturalness (OCP(voi)) co-reside within ansingle module.