Description and Explanation in Inflectional Morphophonology: The Case of the Japanese Verb
Brent de Chene
May 2010 

This is a study of phonological reanalysis--in particular, of the type of reanalysis, typified by rule inversion, in which an existing alternation is reanalyzed as due to an innovative rule whose reality is shown by subsequent extension of the alternation to forms that did not originally display it. The main data set is constituted by the suffixal alternations of Japanese verb inflection, which have been analyzed in at least four distinct ways in the literature. In dealing with the question of which analysis is the descriptively adequate one, I depend on the principle, due to Kiparsky, that synchronic structure constrains change, so that change can be diagnostic of structure: in the context of a general model of the inferential relation between synchrony and diachrony in inflectional morphophonology, I compute the predictions for potential change for three analyses of the Japanese alternations and show that only one is consistent with the results of a nationwide survey of inflection. With regard to the explanatory principles governing the choice of the descriptively adequate analysis, the overriding criterion is seen to be predictability of inflected forms (IF Predictability); I consider and reject, however, the position that speakers evaluate for IF Predictability a unitary complex of base forms and rule(s), concluding on the basis of attested or ongoing reanalyses in Portuguese and Korean that base forms are chosen first and that only then do speakers deal with the question of whether the alternation is rule-governed. Finally, without taking a stand on the descriptive question of how much less constrained rules resulting from reanalysis are (how much "crazier" they can be) compared with rules (or constraints) that directly reflect the phonologization of phonetic variation, I suggest that the phonology of phonologization and the phonology of reanalysis are sharply distinct at the explanatory level--in particular, in their respective principles of base form choice.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/001055 (please use that when you cite this article, unless you want to cite the full url: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001055)
Published in:	unpublished
keywords:	japanese, verb inflection, external evidence, descriptive adequacy, reanalysis, analogy, phonology, morphology
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