A crosslinguistic study of prosody of particles: Japanese and Bantu languages

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K00578
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 02060:Linguistics-related
• Research Institution: International Christian University
• Principal Investigator: Lee Seunghun 国際基督教大学, 教養学部, 上級准教授 (20770134)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 品川 大輔 東京外国語大学, アジア・アフリカ言語文化研究所, 准教授 (80513712) ; 松浦 年男 北星学園大学, 文学部, 教授 (80526690)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: Prosody / Particles / Japanese / Xitsonga / Swahili

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The grant spent four years studying particle prosody in Japanese, Xitsonga, and Swahili. Field data collection was hampered by the COVID pandemic, but project members used online methods to continue the research. In Japanese, prosody was influenced by the lexical tone of particles and the tonal patterns of root words. Focus realization was less pronounced at the beginning of a phrase, suggesting the presence of confounding factors at phrase boundaries. In Xitsonga, the size of a phrase affected the prosodic status of a particle, showing a mismatch between syntactic and prosodic structures. The exclusive particle /tu/ in Swahili showed a local rather than a global influence on sentence prosody. This cross-linguistic study showed that particles can be prosodically independent of their root, deviating from the morphosyntactic structure.

Free Research Field

Prosody-Syntax Interface, Phonetics, Tone

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

この研究では、文構造や接辞の位置が異なる2つのバントゥー言語と日本語を比較して、不変化詞のプロソディーの共通点について調査した。プロソディーから独立した不変化詞（日本語の平板型、スワヒリ語では/tu/）と、語幹にくっついたもの（ツォンガ語の接頭辞、日本語の起伏形）がある。抽象的なレベルでは、言語には共通点が多いことを示しており、言語の違いは、むしろ表面的なものである可能性を示唆している。