Study on the interaction betwen the effects of OCP and identity avoidance

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K16831
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Keio University
• Principal Investigator: SANO Shin-ichiro 慶應義塾大学, 商学部(日吉), 准教授 (30609615)
• Research Collaborator: KAWAHARA Shigeto ; NAMBU Satoshi
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: OCP / ライマンの法則 / 借用語有声促音の無声化 / 日本語話し言葉コーパス / variation / interaction / internal factor / external factor

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project focused on the effects of Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) that bans similarity or identity at various linguistic levels. In particular, employing actual speech data provided by corpora, this study examined the interactions observed when different kinds of identities (violations of the OCP) are in conflict with each other.
The results suggest that 1) the effects of the identity avoidance induced by the OCP are general properties observed across phenomenon; 2) The effects vary depending on the kinds of phenomenon and contexts (e.g., A process is triggered/blocked). Based on the results, this study generalized the patterns of the effects; for example, voicing identity is more likely to be avoided than segmental (consonant, vowel) identity, and the effects of identity avoidance depend on the syllable structure and the distance between segments with target features. Additionally, the study found that these patterns are observed also in syntactic phenomena.

Free Research Field

音韻論，社会言語学，コーパス言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

[1] 必異原理の効果，及びその相互作用が明らかになることにより，その知見を基にして音声学的手法による検証を発展させることできる(とりわけ，どのような項目を調べれば良いのか，仮説の立て方について指針を示すことができるなど) 。
[2] 必異原理は人間言語に広く見られる。従って，本研究において得られた知見を基にして，特徴の異なる他の言語との比較を行うなど通言語的な研究へと発展させることができる。
[3] 従来の定性的・理論的研究における主張の妥当性を検証し，それを修正，あるいは強化するなど，言語理論全体の発展が期待できる。