言語研究（Gengo Kenkyu）150: 1–31（2016）

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese
Haruo Kubozono

National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
Abstract: This article describes the diversity of pitch accent systems found in
Koshikijima Japanese in comparison with those of Kagoshima and Tokyo Japanese. Koshikijima Japanese is a highly endangered dialect spoken on the Koshikijima Islands in the south of Japan. While sharing many phonological featureswith Kagoshima and Nagasaki Japanese, this dialect is strikingly different fromthe sister dialects in several respects. Unlike Kagoshima Japanese, for example,
Koshikijima Japanese is basically a mora-counting language where the numberof moras, and not syllables, is counted to compute the position of word-level
phonological prominence. Unlike Kagoshima and Nagasaki, moreover, most of
Koshikijima’s systems permit more than one High tone in relatively long words,
apparently violating the principle of culminativity. Furthermore, Koshikijima
Japanese displays a high degree of regional variations, thus developing several
pitch accent systems that are different from each other in several respects such as
culminativity, mora-syllable interactions, the interactions between the two Hightones, and the High tone deletion phenomenon at the post-lexical level.*
Key words: Koshikijima Japanese, Kagoshima Japanese, pitch accent, syllable,
mora

1. Introduction
1.1. Koshikijima Japanese
Koshikijima Japanese, henceforth ‘KJ’ in this paper, is spoken on the Koshikijima
Islands in the south of Japan, about 40 km to the west of the mainland ofKagoshima, Kyushu, or about 100 km to the south of Nagasaki (see Map 1). The
name ‘Koshikijima’ literally means the island of koshiki ‘steaming basket’.1 While
this implies that it is one island, it is in fact composed of three small islands—kami(north), naka (central) and shimo (south)—each containing one to seven small
villages each with 50 to 1,200 inhabitants (see Map 2). Koshikijima as a whole* I would like to thank the informants of Koshikijima Japanese for providing valuable data
and two anonymous reviewers of the journal for their invaluable comments. The work reported in this article was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI grants (Grant no. 25580098
and 26244022) and the NINJAL collaborative research projects (‘Phonological characteristics of the Japanese lexicon’ and ‘Cross-linguistic studies of Japanese prosody and grammar’).
1 The name of the island has two variants, Koshikijima (with rendaku voicing) and Koshikishima. This article adopts the former variant, which has a voiced consonant at the beginningof the second element.

2  Haruo Kubozono

extends 38 km from north to south and 10 km from east to west in the East China
Sea.

Map 1

Map 2

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   3

Separated by the sea from the mainland, Koshikijima has developed a uniqueprosodic system—or, better yet, prosodic systems, if we focus on regional differences within the language. As a whole, it shows many interesting features thatare not found in its sister dialects such as Kagoshima and Nagasaki Japanese orin other dialects including standard Tokyo Japanese. This prompts us to call the
Koshikijima Islands a ‘Galapagos of Japan’. Moreover, KJ displays considerable
differences in prosodic organization among the villages since they were separated
from each other by mountains or the sea. In fact, the inhabitants of the Islands
mainly used small boats to travel from one village to another until they were connected by road quite recently.
The population of the Islands was about 21,000 in 1937 (Kamimura 1941),
which may have increased a little bit at some point after the Second World War.
However, it is currently about 5,000 partly because almost all young people haveleft the Islands at the age of fifteen to receive higher education on the mainland:
there was and still is no senior high school on the Islands. Very few of them returnto their home island due to the lack of proper work there. On the other hand, thepopulation remains 5,000 or so because many people from the mainland began tolive there for the purpose of marriage and also for public work in a military baseand other places. The estimated number of native speakers of KJ is about 3,000
most of whom are over 60 years old now. Since there is virtually no public movement to revive the traditional language, KJ is indeed at the risk of extinction in thenext few decades.
1.2. Kamimura (1937, 1941)
Not surprisingly, there are not many linguistic descriptions of KJ in the literature.2
For prosody, however, Takaji Kamimura left valuable records about how basic
words were pronounced on the Islands on the basis of his own fieldwork in 1937
(Kamimura 1937, 1941). His eighty-year-old descriptions are far from complete orcomprehensive in our current standards, but are detailed enough for us to understand and reconstruct the basic prosodic structure of KJ eighty years ago as wellas the changes that have taken place over the years. Born in 1908 and brought up
in Nakakoshiki in what was formerly Kamikoshiki Village in the north island,
Kamimura himself was a native speaker of the language. It is therefore safe toassume that his descriptions are primarily based on his own pronunciations andthe prosodic system in his native village at that time although he claims thatthey cover most major villages/dialects on the Islands.3 We will reconstruct his
system in the course of discussion in this paper to better understand the systems
that are found on the Islands today as well as the differences they exhibit among
themselves.

2 See Kubozono (2015b) and the references cited therein for the grammar of this language.
3 Kamimura (1941) says that he did fieldwork in ten villages, i.e. Sato, Nakakoshiki, Eishi,

Oshima, and Segami on the north island, Taira on the central island, and Imuta (Kashima),
Nagahama, Aose, and Teuchi on the south island.

4  Haruo Kubozono

The current study is primarily based on the data collected from the original
fieldwork on the Islands which the author started on his own in 2005 and has
continued in collaboration with other phonologists since 2006.4,5 This collaborative work has produced an accent database that is available to the public now(Kubozono 2016). This online database provides the sounds of basic words andtheir phrasal expressions as produced by sixteen native speakers representing eightvillages on the Islands (two speakers per village).
1.3. Goals and organization of this article
The purpose of this article is to present a basic description of the current prosodic
systems of KJ and their diversity. They are compared with the systems of its sister
dialects—Kagoshima and Nagasaki Japanese—as well as the system of standard
Tokyo Japanese, wherever necessary.6 To achieve this goal, the paper is organized as follows. In the next section (section 2), KJ is compared with Kagoshima
Japanese with main focus on the similarities and differences that they exhibit withrespect to word accent systems. KJ is similar to its sister dialect in many respects
but is crucially different from it in other respects. This will be followed by a discussion of inter-language differences within KJ, or the differences that the villages
display in the organization of prosodic systems (section 3). The section will include
the discussions of how word-level prominences are computed, how they are modified in sentence-level phonology, and how contour tones are avoided. The final
section (section 4) summarizes the main points and some questions that remain
for future work.
2. Koshikijima versus Kagoshima Japanese
2.1. Similarities between Koshikijima and Kagoshima Japanese
KJ as a whole resembles its sister language, Kagoshima Japanese, in many crucial
ways. This section describes four major similarities regarding (i) the number ofaccent patterns, (ii) the direction in which the word-level prominence is computed,(iii) the left-dominant nature of the compound accent/tone rule, and (iv) the
domain where the accent patterns are defined.
2.1.1. Two-pattern system
The first feature that Koshikijima and Kagoshima Japanese have in common concerns the number of distinctive accent patterns permitted in the system. Unlike
Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka Japanese, where the number of distinctive accent patterns
increases in proportion to the phonological length of the word, Koshikijima and

4 The collaborators are Nobuko Kibe, Tomoyuki Kubo, Akiko Matsumori, Tetsuo Nitta,
and Zendo Uwano.
5 This article is based on the data from multiple speakers, at least two speakers in each village, aged between forty five and eighty two at the time of the recordings.
6 See Uwano (1999, 2012a) and Kubozono (2010, 2012a, 2015a), among others, for thediversity of pitch accent systems in Japanese.

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   5

Kagoshima Japanese permit only two accent patterns or classes regardless of thelength of the word (see Hirayama 1951: 9, Haraguchi 1977: 195, Shibatani 1990:
182, Kibe 2000: 1, and Kubozono 2004, 2006b, 2007, 2010, 2011a for Kagoshima
Japanese, and Kamimura 1937, 1941 and Kubozono 2010, 2012b, c for KJ). In
Uwano’s (1999) classification, the Tokyo-type system is labeled as a ‘multiplepattern system’, whereas the systems of Koshikijima and Kagoshima are characterized as ‘two-pattern systems,’ which is a subtype of ‘N-pattern systems’.
The two patterns in Koshikijima and Kagoshima Japanese are traditionallycalled Type A and Type B, respectively (Hirayama 1951: 11).7 In both languages,
Type A attracts a H(igh) tone on the penultimate syllable/mora, whereas Type B
involves an H tone on the final syllable/mora—we will come back to the syllable/mora distinction shortly below (section 2.2). This is illustrated in (1), where KJ isrepresented by the Teuchi dialect, spoken at the southern edge of the southern
island. In (1) and the rest of this article, high-pitched portions are shown by capital letters, while syllable boundaries are denoted by dots.8(1)

Accent TypeType A

Koshikijima-Teuchi

Kagoshima

gloss

i.NA.kai.NA.kacountryside

KA.ma.BO.ko

ka.ma.BO.ko

A.me

ka.TA.ti
a.METype B

A.me

ka.TA.ti
a.ME

I.no.TI

i.no.TI

A.SA.ga.O

a.sa.ga.O

KO.ko.ROko.ko.RO

candy
shape

boiled fish paste
rain
life

heart

morning glory (flower)

Koshikijima-Teuchi Japanese involves two H tones in relatively long words, i.e.
four-mora or longer Type A words as well as three-mora or longer Type B words.
Namely, in addition to the H tone that corresponds to the H tone in Kagoshima
Japanese, this dialect shows a second H tone at the beginning of relatively longwords. As will be discussed later in the paper, this additional tone, which is called
H1 in this paper, represents a secondary prominence that is phonologically lessimportant than H2, which appears at or near the end of the word. The sole H tone

7 These two accent classes in Koshikijima and Kagoshima Japanese are known to correspond to the traditional word classes based on accent in old Japanese generally known
as ruibetsu-goi (Kindaichi 1974). In the case of bisyllabic nouns, for example, Type A corresponds to Classes 1 and 2 in the ruibetsu-goi list, while Type B corresponds to Classes 3-5(Kibe 2000: 2).
8 The Kunrei Romanization is used for the transcription of Japanese examples. Thus, /si/,/ti/, /tu/ and /hu/ are used for what the Hepburn Romanization would transcribe as /shi/,/chi/, /tsu/, and /fu/.

6  Haruo Kubozonothat appears in relatively short words corresponds to H2 in relatively long words
with two prominences. Ignoring the secondary H tone in Koshikijima for the
moment, the two dialects exhibit basically the same pitch patterns in involving an
H tone in the penultimate (Type A) vs. final (Type B) positions.
2.1.2. Directionality
KJ is also similar to Kagoshima Japanese in computing the position of the wordlevel phonological prominence, or H tone, from the right edge of the word rather
than from the left edge. In Type A words given in (1), for example, the H tone inKagoshima and the primary H tone (H2) in KJ are both assigned to the second
position (syllable or mora) from the end of the word. Type B words exhibit thesame directionality except that they attract the H tone to their final position. In
this way, phonological distances are measured from the end of the word rather
from the beginning in both Koshikijima and Kagoshima Japanese.
This feature is shared by many dialects of Japanese including Tokyo Japanese.
Although only distantly related to the Koshikijima/Kagoshima family, TokyoJapanese computes the position of lexical pitch accent from the right edge of theword, as represented by the famous antepenultimate rule (McCawley 1968: 134).
Thus, most, if not all, accented nouns bear an accent on the antepenultimate mora,
i.e. the third mora from the end of the word (Kubozono 2006a, 2008, 2011a).9
This is shown in (2), where the position of pitch accent—or the position of an
abrupt pitch fall in phonetic terms—is denoted by an apostrophe.
(2)		Accent patterns in Tokyo Japanese
		 i’.no.ti ‘life’
		 a.za’.ra.si ‘earless seal’
		 o.re’n.zi ‘orange’		 ku.ri.su’.ma.su ‘Christmas’
Interestingly, the right-to-left counting procedure is not shared by Nagasaki
Japanese, although it is a member of the family to which Koshikijima andKagoshima Japanese belong (Hirayama 1951, Uwano 1999). In this dialect, wordaccent patterns are computed from the left edge of the word. Trimoraic or longer
Type A words, for example, generally have an H tone on the second mora from the
beginning of the word (Sakaguchi 2001, Matsuura 2014: 10).10 This is illustratedin (3)(3)		Accent patterns in Nagasaki Japanese (Type A)
		 i.NA.ka ‘countryside’

9 Tokyo Japanese has so-called ‘unaccented’ words as another productive pitch pattern. Thispattern is so called because it involves no abrupt pitch fall, which is the phonetic correlate oflexical pitch accent in this language: e.g. /a.ME/ ‘candy’ and /i.NA.KA/.
10 Type B words, on the other hand, are pronounced with a rather flat pitch from the beginning of the word to the end. It is difficult to tell whether this pattern is computed from theleft or right edge of the word.

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   7

		ka.MA.bo.ko ‘boiled fish paste’
		 o.REn.zi ‘orange’		 paA.tii ‘party’		 koN.saa.to ‘concert’
2.1.3. Left-dominant compound accent rule
A third prosodic feature that KJ shares with Kagoshima Japanese concerns thecompound accent/tone rule responsible for the accentuation of compounds suchas compound nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Japanese dialects fall into two groups
in this respect: those that have a left-dominant accent rule and those with a rightdominant one. The former type refers to the accentual property of the initial member and preserves this property in the compound. The latter, on the other hand,refers to the phonological property of the final member and attempts to preserve
the lexical accent of this member in compounds. The family to which Koshikijima,
Kagoshima, and Nagasaki Japanese belong has the left-dominant rule, whereas
standard Tokyo Japanese has the right-dominant one (Uwano 1997, Hayata 1999:
36–41).
The left-dominant compound rule is illustrated in (4) and (5), where KJ-Teuchi
and Kagoshima patterns are given: (A) and (B) stand for Type A and Type B
words, respectively. In both dialects, compounds take Type A pattern if their initial
member is a Type A morpheme, whereas Type B compounds are derived froma Type B initial member. Again, the two dialects yield the same patterns if one
focuses on the position of the H tone at/near the end of the words.11(4)		Compound accent rule in KJ
		a.		NA.tu (A) + KA.ta (A) → NA.tu-GA.ta (A) ‘summer type’
				NA.tu (A) + YA.su.MI (B) → NA.TU-ya.SU.mi (A) ‘summer holiday’		b.		ha.RU (B) + KA.ta (A) → HA.RU-ga.TA (B) ‘spring type’
				ha.RU (B) + YA.su.MI (B) → HA.RU-YA.su.MI (B) ‘spring holiday’(5)		Compound accent rule in Kagoshima Japanese		a.		NA.tu (A) + KA.ta (A) → na.tu-GA.ta (A) ‘summer type’
				NA.tu (A) + ya.su.MI (B) → na.tu-ya.SU.mi (A) ‘summer holiday’		b.		ha.RU (B) + KA.ta (A) → ha.ru-ga.TA (B) ‘spring type’
				ha.RU (B) + ya.su.MI (B) → ha.ru-ya.su.MI (B) ‘spring holiday’
The left-dominant compound rule in (4)–(5) contrasts with the right-dominant nature of the compound rule in Tokyo Japanese. The latter rule yields two
different accent patterns—accented and unaccented ones—depending on thelexical nature of the final members. Thus, compound nouns in (6a) are accented
compounds with a compound accent on the second member, whereas those in (6b)take the unaccented pattern since their final member, i.e. /ka.ta/ ‘type’, serves as a

11 /ka.ta/ ‘style’ undergoes rendaku, or sequential voicing, when it appears in non-initial positions of compounds.

8  Haruo Kubozono

deaccenting morpheme in this dialect, or the type of morpheme that yields unaccented compounds if they appear as their final member (McCawley 1968: 158).
In either case, the same compound accent pattern emerges if the final member is
identical, with the initial members playing little or no role in compound accentuation.12 In (6), the surface pitch patterns in terms of high and low pitches are givenin the parentheses for the sake of comparison with KJ and Kagoshima Japanese in(4)–(5).
(6)		Compound accent rule in Tokyo Japanese		a.		Accented compounds
				na.tu’ + ya.su.mi’ → na.tu-ya’.su.mi (na.TU-YA.su.mi)				ha’.ru + ya.su.mi’ → ha.ru-ya’ .su.mi (ha.RU-YA.su.mi)		b.		Unaccented compounds
				na.tu’ + ka.ta’ → na.tu-gata ‘summer type’ (na.TU-GA.TA)
				ha’.ru + ka.ta’ → ha.ru-ga.ta ‘spring type’ (ha.RU-GA.TA)
2.1.4. Domain: bunsetsu vs. word
KJ and Kagoshima Japanese are similar to each other and different from TokyoJapanese with respect to the domain where the word accent patterns are defined.
In fact, Japanese dialects fall into two groups in this respect, those that assign word
accent in the domain of the word and those in which word accent patterns aredefined within a larger domain known as bunsetsu, or the basic syntactic phrase
consisting of a content word with one or more grammatical particles. The firstgroup includes Tokyo and Kyoto/Osaka Japanese, while the latter includes the dialect family to which Koshikijima and its sister dialects belong (see Uwano 2012b
for more details).
In Tokyo, the phonological prominence known as ‘pitch accent’ is determinedfor each word at the lexical level as opposed to the post-lexical level,13 and it does
not generally change its position whether the word is pronounced in isolation orwith grammatical particles such as the nominative marker /ga/ or the accusative
marker /o/.
(7)		Accent patterns in Tokyo Japanese		a.		i’noti ‘life’		b.		i’noti-ga ‘life-nominative’		c.		i’noti-kara ‘from life’		d.		i’noti-kara-mo ‘from life, too’

12 Tokyo Japanese has several accent rules that exceptionally refer to the phonological property of the leftmost element in compounds. These rules are not general rules but those that
account for the accentuation of particular types of compounds like kin-taroo ‘Gold-Taro’ andmomo’-taroo ‘Peach-Taro’ (Kubozono 1999, forthcoming).
13 This does not mean that the position of pitch accent is lexically given. The accentuationof many words including loanwords and compound words is largely rule-governed, while
words showing some marked accent patterns must be lexically specified for their accentuation (Kubozono 2006a, 2008).

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   9

In KJ and Kagoshima Japanese, on the other hand, the position of the prom­
inence—H tone in tonal descriptions or pitch accent in accentual descriptions—changes depending on whether the word is followed by particles and how longthey are. In (8) and (9), for example, the H tone apparently moves rightwards as
the entire phrase becomes longer. However, its position is invariable if one looks at
the entire phrase as the domain of H tone assignment in these languages. In thecase of the inoti phrases in (8)–(9), the H tone is invariably realized on the final
mora/syllable in the bunsetsu domain. The same is true of Type A words, which
attract an H tone on the penultimate mora/syllable in the same domain: e.g. /ka.TA.ti/ ‘shape’, /KA.ta.TI-ga/ ‘shape-nominative’ (KJ-Teuchi); /ka.TA.ti/ ‘shape’,/ka.ta.TI-ga/ ‘shape-nominative’ (Kagoshima).
(8)		Apparent H tone shift in KJ-Teuchi
		a.		I.no.TI ‘life’		b.		I.NO.ti-GA ‘life-nominative’		c.		I.NO.TI-ka.RA ‘from life’		d.		I.NO.TI-KA.ra-MO ‘from life, too’(9)		Apparent H tone shift in Kagoshima Japanese		a.		i.no.TI ‘life’		b.		i.no.ti-GA ‘life-nominative’		c.		i.no.ti-ka.RA ‘from life’		d.		i.no.ti-ka.ra-MO ‘from life, too’
The difference between the Tokyo-type system in (7) and the KJ-type systemin (8)–(9) can be explained in such a way that the former system assigns pitchaccent within the word per se, while the latter assigns pitch accent or H tone
within the larger domain of the bunsetsu. In other words, grammatical particles
are simply attached to the content word after accent assignment has been made in
the former system,14 while they participate in pitch accent assignment in the lattersystem.
2.2. Differences between Koshikijima and Kagoshima JapaneseWhile KJ shares many basic prosodic features with Kagoshima Japanese, it is different from the sister dialect in two critical respects. First, KJ is basically a moracounting language, whereas Kagoshima Japanese is a syllable-counting one. For
example, Type A words attract an H tone on the penultimate mora in the former
system, but on the penultimate syllable in the latter. Likewise, Type B words are
high-toned on the final mora in the former, but on the final syllable in the latter.
This difference can be seen from the following examples.

14 In Tokyo Japanese, some grammatical particles exceptionally affect word accent patterns,
such as the genitive no, which deletes the accent on the final syllable of its preceding noun
(Akinaga 1985: 85, Poser 1984: 117–120).

10  Haruo Kubozono(10) Mora-counting vs. syllable-counting systems
Type A

KJ-Teuchi(mora-counting)Kagoshima(syllable-counting)gloss

zi.KAnZI.kantime

ba.REeKE.da.MO.no

Type BKE.da.MOn
MI.kaNiN

NI.WA.to.RI
NI.WA.toI

BA.reevolleyballke.da.MO.nowild animalke.DA.mon
mi.KANIN

ni.wa.to.RI
ni.wa.TOI

wild animal (colloquial)orangedog

chickenchicken (colloquial)

A second, and more crucial, difference between the two systems concerns ‘culminativity’ (Hyman 2006).
(11)		Each lexical word has at most one syllable marked for the highest degree of
metrical prominence.
Details put aside, Kagoshima Japanese permits only one H tone per word,
which is linked to a certain syllable in the bunsetsu domain. On the other hand,most KJ dialects allow two H tones in three-mora or longer words (see section 3.1
for an exceptional KJ dialect): the H tone that appears at or near the end of theword, or H2, corresponds to the H tone that appears in Kagoshima Japanese. Thiscan be seen from the examples in (12) below as well as those in (1) above, both ofwhich come from the KJ-Teuchi dialect. As Kubozono (2012b) shows, the two H
tones in this dialect are both lexical (as opposed to phrasal or post-lexical) in thatthe first H tone (H1) as well as the second one (H2) serves to realize the lexical
contrast between Type A and Type B in connected speech (see section 3.5 below
for a detailed discussion).
(12)		KJ-Teuchi (double H tone) vs. Kagoshima (single H tone)
Type A
Type B

KJ-Teuchi(double H tone)

O.na.GO-ga

NA.TU-ya.SU.mi

O.TO.ko-GA

HA.RU-YA.su.MI

Kagoshima(single H tone)
o.na.GO-ga

na.tu-ya.SU.mio.to.ko-GA

ha.ru-ya.su.MI

Glosswoman-nominative

summer holiday

man-nominative
spring holiday

In the KJ-Teuchi dialect, H2 is realized on one particular mora of the word/bunsetsu, while H1 can spread over more than one mora. These two H tones arecorrelated with each other in such a way that they are usually separated by one
low-toned syllable. This can be seen from the various phonological forms of theType A word /ka.za.ri.mo.no/ ‘ornament’ in (13): (13a) represents a careful pro-

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   11nunciation, while (13b–d) are its casual variants. The same rule is used in Type B
words, too, which differ from Type A words in lacking the final low-toned mora.
(13)		H1 and H2 in KJ-Teuchi
		a.		KA.ZA.ri.MO.no		b.		KA.zai.MO.no, *KA.ZAi.MO.no		c.		KA.ZA.ri.MOn
		d.		KA.zai.MOn, *KA.ZAi.MOn
Two points are worthy of special attention here. First, the two H tones are separated by one low-toned syllable, not by a low-toned mora. This can be attributed
to a constraint prohibiting falling contour tones in H1 such as /ZAi/ although thisconstraint does not work with respect to H2 as can be seen in (13c, d) (see section
3.4.3 for a full discussion). As a consequence of this, H1 is apparently linked ona syllabic rather than moraic basis and is realized on the syllable or stretch of syllables in word-initial position. While this is not true of all KJ dialects, as will be
discussed in section 3.2 below, the syllable’s role in the assignment of H1 contrasts
with the mora’s role in the assignment of H2 within the same dialect. In otherwords, both phonological units are indispensable for the description of one and thesame word.
Another noteworthy point about the two H tones in the KJ-Teuchi system isthat H2 is phonologically primary while H1 is secondary both in Type A and B
words. This is not simply because H2 corresponds to the sole H tone in the sister
dialect of Kagoshima, as shown in (1) and (12) above. More crucially, the domainof H1 is always dependent on the position of H2 in this system. This can be seenfrom the examples in (13) above, where high-toned portions in the word-initial
position vary in size/length depending on the type of the following syllable. The
same point can be seen more clearly in (14), where the domain of H1 becomeslarger as the phrase becomes longer. In all these cases, the position of H2 is invariable, i.e. fixed on the penultimate mora in Type A and on the final mora in TypeB, while the domain of H1 is variable and quite redundant for tonal distinctions.
This suggests that H2 is phonologically dominant over H1. We will see additional
evidence for this in section 3.3 below.
(14)		Correlation between H1 and H2 in KJ-Teuchi
		a.		NA.TU-ya.SU.mi ‘summer holiday’				NA.TU-YA.su.MI-ga ‘summer holiday-nominative’				NA.TU-YA.SU.mi-KA.ra ‘from the summer holiday’				NA.TU-YA.SU.MI-ka.RA-mo ‘also from the summer holiday’		b.		HA.RU-YA.su.MI ‘spring holiday’				HA.RU-YA.SU.mi-GA ‘spring holiday-nominative’				HA.RU-YA.SU.MI-ka.RA ‘from the spring holiday’				HA.RU-YA.SU.MI-KA.ra-MO ‘also from the spring holiday’12  Haruo Kubozono

3. Regional variations in Koshikijima Japanese
Given the differences between KJ and Kagoshima Japanese in section 2.2, one
might wonder why and how these differences emerged. For instance, the difference
between the mora-counting system of KJ and the syllable-counting Kagoshima
system is impressive and raises the question of how the mora-counting system
could have developed into the syllable-counting one (or vice versa) in the history of the dialects. One might also wonder how the single H tone system in
Kagoshima developed into the double H tone system of KJ (or vice versa). These
differences are quite astonishing especially given their crucial similarities discussed
in section 2.1. They may become easier to understand if one considers the striking
variations within KJ. This section analyzes regional differences with main focus on
three JK dialects, Teuchi, Taira and Kuwanoura, calling them KJ-Teuchi, KJ-Tairaand KJ-Kuwanoura, respectively, in what follows.15 These three dialects have beenchosen here because KJ-Kuwanoura and KJ-Teuchi look most and least similar
to the old KJ system that Kamimura (1937, 1941) described, respectively, while
KJ-Taira has a prosodic system quite distinct from those of all other KJ dialects.
3.1. Culminativity
As mentioned in section 2.2 above, KJ-Teuchi and other KJ dialects permit two
H tones in three-mora or longer words. However, there is one exception to this,which is KJ-Taira. Among many KJ dialects, KJ-Taira permits only one H tone perword, irrespective of the length of the word. In this respect, KJ-Taira is similar to
Kagoshima and is unique among KJ dialects. This difference, which is illustratedin (15), was already noted by Kamimura (1937, 1941), which means that KJ-Taira
was already distinct from all other KJ dialects back in the 1930s.16(15)		Double H vs. single H tone systems in KJ
AccentType

Kamimura’s old KJ-Teuchi
system(Double H tone)(Double H tone)

Type A o.NA.go

KA.ma.BO.ko

na.TU.ya.SU.mi
Type B

ni.GI.i.ME.si

KJ-TairaK a g o s h i m a gloss(Single H tone) (Single H tone)o.NA.goo.NA.goo.NA.gowoman

NA.TU.ya.SU.mi

na.tu.ya.SU.mi

na.tu.ya.SU.misummer holiday

KA.ma.BO.ko
NI.gii.ME.si

ka.ma.BO.ko
ni.gii.ME.si

O.to.KO

O.to.KO

ha.RU.ya.su.MI

HA.RU.YA.su.MI ha.ru.ya.su.MI

a.SA.ga.O

A.SA.ga.O

o.to.KOa.sa.ga.O

ka.ma.BO.ko
ni.gii.ME.si

boiled fish paste
rice ballo.to.KOman

ha.ru.ya.su.MI

spring holiday

a.sa.ga.O

morning glory

15 Of these dialects, KJ-Kuwanoura is a highly endangered dialect with only fifty native
speakers. KJ-Taira and KJ-Teuchi have about 200 and 600 native speakers, respectively.
16 KJ-Taira is not entirely identical to Kagoshima Japanese since, as discussed in section 2.2,
it is a mora-counting system like all other KJ dialects: e.g. /ba.REe/ (KJ-Taira) vs. /BA.ree/(Kagoshima) ‘volleyball’ (see section 3.4.1 for more details).

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   13It remains a mystery why KJ-Taira was different from all the other KJ dialects
eighty years ago and remains so even today. Geographically, Taira is the only village on the small central island and has thus been separated from all the other KJ
villages by the sea (see Map 2). However, all the other dialects have also been geographically isolated from each other, although mainly by mountains.
Historically, the following scenario may be postulated. First, the ancestor of KJ
dialects probably had only one H tone underlyingly just like their sister dialects ofKagoshima and Nagasaki Japanese today. This single H tone system has remained
intact in and only in KJ-Taira: namely, this dialect keeps the old feature of the
proto-KJ system in this respect. Second, this old single H tone system then developed in other villages of the Islands into a system that permits two H tones inrelatively long words: the H tone at the beginning of the word probably emergedin the system as a kind of boundary tone signaling the beginning of the word orphrase.
3.2. Interactions between the two H tones
As mentioned above, all KJ dialects except the KJ-Taira dialect permit two H
tones per word. These dialects generally exhibit two H tones in three-mora or
longer words in Type B and in four-mora and longer words in Type A. However,they are not homogeneous but exhibit regional differences. They actually fall into
two groups depending on the degree to which the two H tones interact with eachother. One group is represented by KJ-Teuchi illustrated in (1) and (14). In thissystem, H1 can spread over several word-initial syllables in four-mora or longer
words/phrases and is always dependent on H2 in that the domain of H1 is determined by the position of H2. As shown with the Type A word ‘Washington’ in(16), the two H tones are intervened by one and only one syllable.17(16)		H1-H2 interactions in KJ-Teuchi
		a.		WA.sin.TOn ‘Washington’
		b.		WA.sin.TOn-ga ‘Washington-nominative’		c.		WA.SIN.ton-KA.ra ‘from Washington’
		d.		WA.SIN.TON-ka.RA-mo ‘from Washington, too’
Many KJ dialects including KJ-Sato, KJ-Nakakoshiki, and KJ-Kashima exhibit
more or less the same feature as KJ-Teuchi although the two H tones may occasionally be separated by more than one syllable.18
While many KJ dialects display the same pattern as KJ-Teuchi, KJ-Kuwanoura
exhibits an entirely different pattern with respect to the interaction between the
two H tones. In this dialect, H1 is basically restricted to the word-initial two
moras: it cannot spread over to the third mora of the phrase unless the second and

17 In (16b), H2 does not fall on the penultimate mora but shifts one mora to the left because the penultimate mora is the non-head mora of a heavy syllable. This H tone shift will
be discussed in detail in section 3.4.1 below.
18 This inter-dialectal difference must be examined in more detail in the future.

14  Haruo Kubozono

third moras form a heavy syllable.19 In this respect, this system is most similar tothe old system that Kamimura (1937, 1941) described. (17) compares the two systems with each other as well as with that of KJ-Teuchi.
(17)		H1-H2 interactions in KJ dialects
Accent Type Kamimura (1937)

Type A

KJ-Teuchi

gloss

KA.ma.BO.ko

boiled fish paste

O.NA.goo.NA.gona.TU.ya.SU.mi

NA.TU.ya.SU.mi

NA.TU.ya.SU.mi

KA.ma.BO.ko
ni.GI.i.ME.si
ka.ZAi.MOn

Type B

KJ-Kuwanourao.NA.goka.ZA.ri.MOn

KA.MA.BO.ko
NI.GII.ME.si

KA.ZAI.MOn

KA.ZA.ri.MOn

NI.gii.ME.si

KA.zai.MOn

KA.ZA.ri.MOn

woman

summer holiday
rice ballornament
ornament

O.to.KO

O.TO.KO

O.to.KO

man

a.NI.saN

A.NI.saN

A.NI.saN

elder brothera.SA.ga.O
seN.seI

ha.RU.ya.su.MI

A.SA.ga.O
SEN.seI

HA.RU.ya.su.MI

A.SA.ga.O
SEN.seI

HA.RU.YA.su.MI

morning glory
teacherspring holiday

While KJ-Kuwanoura looks quite similar to Kamimura’s old system, they are
actually different from each other in three crucial respects. First, H1 may be realized over two moras in the former, especially when the word-initial two moras
form a heavy syllable, e.g. /SEN.seI/, while it is restricted to a single mora, usually
the second one, in the latter system, e.g. /seN.seI/ (section 3.4.2).20 Second, thetwo H tones may clash in the former, but not in the latter: /KA.MA.BO.ko/ vs.
/KA.ma.BO.ko/ ‘boiled fish paste’, /O.TO.KO/ vs. /O.to.KO/ ‘man’. Third, H1
exceptionally spreads to the third mora in the former system if the second andthird moras form a heavy syllable: /NI.GII.ME.si/ vs. /ni.GIi.ME.si/ ‘rice ball’,/NI.GII.me.SI-ga/ vs. /ni.GIi.me.SI-ga/ ‘rice ball (nominative)’. This rightward H
tone spreading is not reported in Kamimura (1941), suggesting that it is a rather
new innovation in the history of KJ-Kuwanoura (see section 3.4.3 below for moredetails).
In Kamimura’s old system, H1 and H2 interacted with each other partially:
namely, H1 is assigned to the second mora in principle independently of H2, but it
moves to the first if it would clash with H2. Assuming that both KJ-Kuwanoura’sand KJ-Teuchi’s contemporary systems developed from Kamimura’s old system, a

19 The initial mora may be optionally low-toned if it does not form a heavy syllable with thesecond mora.
20 Kamimura (1941) noted one exceptional dialect in his description. He mentions that H1
occasionally moves to the third mora in five-mora or longer words in KJ-Eishi: e.g. /sa.ku.
RA.no-HA.na/ ‘cherry blossom’ (Type A), /i.ro-En.pi.TU/ ‘color pencil’ (Type B) in KJEishi vs. /sa.KU.ra.no-HA.na/, /i.RO-en.pi.TU/ in other KJ dialects. It is not clear whether
this rightward movement of H1 in KJ-Eishi eighty years ago has anything to do with theprocess of H1 spreading that takes place in present-day KJ-Teuchi and other KJ dialects.

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   15careful comparison of the three systems suggests that KJ dialects have developed in
two opposite directions over the past eighty years. On the one hand, the old system developed into the system of KJ-Kuwanoura, where H1 has become entirely
independent of H2 so that H1 may clash with H2. On the other hand, the same
system developed into the system of KJ-Teuchi and other dialects, where H1 has
become so dependent on H2 that the domain of H1 is entirely determined by the
position of H2.
3.3. Nature and directionality of H1
The difference between KJ-Teuchi and KJ-Kuwanoura regarding the (in)dependence between the two H tones can be better understood as a difference in thenature of H1 as well as a difference in the direction to which this tone spreads inwords and phrases.
In all systems including Kamimura’s, H2 is assigned from right to left, associated with the penultimate mora (Type A) and the final mora (Type B), respectively. In this regard, there is little or no regional or historical difference. This basic
feature is shared by KJ-Taira, too, the only KJ dialect that permits only one H tone
irrespective of the length of the word (section 3.1).
While H2 shows little dialectal and historical difference, H1 exhibits remarkable differences. In KJ-Teuchi, this tone is assigned from right to left since itis entirely dependent on H2. In this system, H2 is computed by a right-to-leftprocedure, while H1 is assigned to all syllables between H2 and the beginningof the word, with an intervening low-toned syllable.21 Hence, the domain of
H1 becomes longer as the word/phrase becomes longer: e.g. /NA.TU.ya.SU.mi/,/NA.TU.YA.su.MI-ga/, /NA.TU.YA.SU.mi-KA.ra/ (see also (14) and (16)).
H1’s dependence on H2 in KJ-Teuchi can be seen more clearly if H2 is subject
to H tone shift. In Type A words, H2 shifts one mora to the left if the penultimate
mora happens to be the second, i.e. non-head, mora of a heavy syllable: in otherwords, it shifts to the head mora of the syllable containing the penultimate mora
due to a constraint against a rising contour tone (see section 3.4 for a full discussion). H1 is sensitive to this H tone shift in that its domain is determined after thisshift has taken place.
(18)		H2 shift in KJ-Teuchi and its consequences
		a.		paN.tu → PAn.tu ‘pants’		b.		wa.sin.toN-ga → wa.sin.TOn-ga → WA.sin.TOn-ga ‘Washington-nominative’																	*WA.SIN.toN-ga, *WA.SIN.TOn-ga																cf. WA.sin.TOn ‘Washington’
The examples in (18) show that the relationship between H1 and H2 in KJ-Teuchi
can best be understood if one posits that the two H tones are assigned in a derivational way, namely, that the domain of H1 spreading is determined after the

21 See Myers (1990) for a similar accent system in Shona, a Bantu language spoken in Zimbabwe and its vicinity.

16  Haruo Kubozono

position of H2 has been determined. Note that in this system, H1 is not just aboundary tone signaling the beginning of a new word or phrase, as it was in the
old KJ system that Kamimura (1937, 1941) described. This tone as well as H2 canpotentially keep the two accent classes apart from each other, although it plays asecondary, redundant role at the lexical level. This point becomes clearer when thedeletion of H2 at the post-lexical level is considered shortly (section 3.5).
While H1 is totally dependent on H2 in KJ-Teuchi, the two tones are entirely
independent of each other in KJ-Kuwanoura. In this latter system, H1 is restrictedbasically to the initial two moras irrespective of the position of H2 no matter how
long the words may be: e.g. /HA.RU-ya.su.MI/, */HA.RU-YA.su.MI/. The only
case where H1 spreads to the third mora is when the second and third moras form
one heavy syllable, as mentioned above. Moreover, the two H tones may clash witheach other: /KA.MA.BO.ko/, */KA.ma.BO.ko/ ‘boiled fish paste’; /O.TO.KO/,*/O.to.KO/ ‘man’. What these facts mean is that H1 is assigned from left to rightrather than from right to left. Thus, the two H tones are assigned in entirely different procedures in this system.
Note in this connection that H1 plays no distinctive role in the KJ-Kuwanourasystem since it is assigned independent of H2 in both Type A and Type B words:
e.g. /NA.TU-ya.SU.mi/ ‘summer holiday’ vs. /HA.RU-ya.su.MI/ ‘spring holiday’.
This indicates that H1 only serves as a boundary tone just as it did in Kamimura’s
old system eighty years ago. Seen from a historical point of view, KJ-Kuwanoura
has inherited this particular feature from Kamimura’s old system, where H1 wasbasically fixed to the second mora from the beginning of the word and H2 was
assigned from the end of the word. In this sense, the system of KJ-Kuwanoura as
well as Kamimura’s old one represents a hybrid system where the two H tones are
assigned in different/opposite directions within the same word.
3.4. Roles of the syllable in KJ
As described in section 2.2 above, KJ is basically a mora-counting language since
the position of its distinctive H tone—H2 in three-mora or longer words and thesole H tone in shorter words—is computed by counting the number of moras fromthe end of the word/phrase: specifically, it is placed on the penultimate mora (TypeA words) or on the final mora (Type B words). However, KJ dialects today aresensitive to the syllable, too, as evidenced by the fact that they do not freely allow
contour tones, i.e. syllables involving a change in pitch level. Specifically, they generally avoid the rising contour tone in (19a), where the H tone is linked only to thenon-head mora of heavy syllables. This structure should be permitted in a purely
moraic system such as the one found in Nagasaki Japanese, where H tone may belinked to any mora, whether it is the head or non-head mora of a heavy syllable.22

22 In Nagasaki Japanese, Type A words bear an H tone on the penultimate mora irrespective of its syllabic status: /o.NA.go/ ‘woman’, /o.REn.zi/ ‘orange’, /koN.saa.to/ ‘concert’(Matsuura 2014).

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   17(19)		Contour tones
			a. Rising contour tone						b. Falling contour toneσ														σ			μ		μ												μ		μ							L		H												H		L
Interestingly, KJ dialects differ from each other in the extent to which thesemarked structures are avoided as well as how they are actually remedied. Moreover,H1 and H2 often behave differently to avoid the two marked structures in (19)within the same word in the same dialect. Despite these differences, avoidance ofthe contour tones in general sheds light on the role of the syllable in the KJ dialects as we will see in what follows.
3.4.1. Avoidance of rising contour tone in H2
The rising contour pattern in (19a) is generally avoided across KJ dialects inassigning H2 tone (or the sole H tone in short words and the sole H tone in
KJ-Taira). To avoid this marked structure, the KJ dialects exhibit two solutions, H
tone spreading and H tone shift, which are schematically shown in (20) and (21),respectively.
(20)		H tone spreadingσ								σμ		μ→			 μ μ									H							H(21)		H tone shift
σ

σ

μ		μ
→
μ		μ
		
				
					H						HOf these two solutions, the rule in (20) spreads the H tone to the entire syllable. This strategy is taken only by KJ-Taira, the dialect where only one H tone—
corresponding to H2 in other KJ dialects—is permitted in all words and phrases.
Unlike H tone shift to be explained below, this process occurs in both accent
classes, as shown in (22).
(22)		H tone spreading in KJ-Taira		a.		Type A				paN.tu → PAN.tu ‘pants’				puU.ru → PUU.ru ‘swimming pool’18  Haruo Kubozono

				ra.I.to → RAI.to ‘light, right’				tyo.ko.reE.to → tyo.ko.REE.to ‘chocolate’		b.		Type B
				iN → IN ‘dog’				mi.kaN → mi.KAN ‘orange’				sen.seI → sen.SEI
Historically, Kamimura (1941: 15) reported on this rule in his description of
KJ-Taira eighty years ago although he exemplified it with Type B words only:/an.SAN/ ‘elder brother’, /ha.ma.GUI/ ‘clam’. Note that this rule does not result
in tonal neutralization since Type A words are still clearly kept distinct from TypeB words of the same syllable structure: e.g. /PAN.tu/ ‘pants’ (Type A) vs. /rin.GO/‘apple’ (Type B); /KAn/ ‘can’ (Type A) vs. /IN/ ‘dog’ (Type B); /ru.PAn/ ‘Lupin’(Type A) vs. /mi.KAN/ ‘orange’ (Type B).
Given the examples in (22), one may suspect that this dialect is basically asyllable-counting one, just like Kagoshima Japanese illustrated in (10) above. This
interpretation is compatible with the accent patterns of Type B words, which all
exhibit an H tone on their final syllables, whether heavy or light. However, it does
not account for some Type A patterns since the H tone readily docks on the final
syllable if it is heavy. This is exemplified in (23), where the word /ke.da.MOn/‘wild animal’ and /sai.DAa/ ‘cider, lemonade’ clearly show the difference between
KJ-Taira and Kagoshima Japanese. Both the Type A and Type B patterns in theformer system can be accounted for in a principled way if and only if one assumes
a mora-counting procedure and the additional H tone spreading rule illustrated in(22).
(23)		Comparison of KJ-Taira with Kagoshima Japanese
Accent typeType A

KJ-Taira (mora counting)Kagoshima (syllable counting)gloss

ke.da.MOn

ke.DA.monwild animalo.REN.zi

o.REN.zi

o.NA.gosai.DAa
Type B

mi.KANo.to.KOo.NA.goSAI.daami.KANo.to.KO

woman

lemonadeorangeorangeman

While H tone spreading is found in KJ-Taira, H tone shift in (21) is observed
elsewhere in the KJ dialects including KJ-Teuchi and KJ-Kuwanoura. Interestingly,
this rule differs from H tone spreading in occurring only in Type A words, thus
giving rise to an asymmetry between the two accent classes. This is exemplified in(24).

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   19(24)		H tone shift in KJ dialects (except KJ-Taira)		a.		Type A				paN.tu → PAn.tu ‘pants, underwear’				PO.paI-ga → po.PAi.-ga ‘Popeye-nominative’		b.		Type B
				iN → *In ‘dog’				MI.kaN → *mi.KAn ‘orange’				I.NA.BI.kaI → *I.NA.bi.KAi ‘a flash of lightning’
Several points should be noted about this rule. First, the H tone shift rule is
not a new rule in the history of KJ dialects as Kamimura (1941) already reported
on it in his description of KJ dialects eighty years ago. Secondly, this rule is identical in nature to the accent shift observed in Tokyo Japanese and other dialects of
the language.23 Both in H tone shift in (24) and the accent shift in Tokyo Japanesein (25), non-head moras of heavy syllables cannot bear the highest prominence of
the word on their own and shift it to the head mora of the same syllable.
(25)		Accent shift in Tokyo Japanese		roN.don → ROn.don ‘London’		saI.daa → SAi.daa ‘cider, lemonade’
		paA.maa → PAa.maa ‘Palmer’
Third, H tone shift succeeds in avoiding the rising contour tone in (19a), but
creates a falling contour tone in (19b) instead, suggesting that the rising contour tone is more marked than the falling contour tone. This is consistent with
Hyman’s observation of African tone languages (Hyman 2007).24 However, thisgives rise to an interesting asymmetry between H1 and H2 with respect to (19b):
the falling contour tone in (19b) is freely allowed in H2 but not in H1. As we will
see in section 3.4.3 below, H1 does not tolerate this marked structure in either
KJ-Kuwanoura or KJ-Teuchi. It is interesting to ask why the falling contour tone
is allowed in H2, but not in H1.
One may wonder here why the H tone shift exhibits an A-B asymmetry, i.e.
why Type B tolerates the marked structure in (19a). This can be attributed to a
constraint against neutralization, or a loss of tonal contrast (Kubozono 2012c).
If Type B words underwent H tone shift, they would end up exhibiting the same
pitch pattern as Type A words: the hypothetical outputs in (24b), e.g. */mi.KAn/(Type B), would be indistinguishable from their Type A counterparts, e.g.
/zi.KAn/ ‘time’. This is another place where one observes a strong force to preservea tonal contrast in KJ dialects.
Comparing KJ-Taira and other KJ dialects, it is not clear why only the former

23 Because of this rule, McCawley (1968: 134, 1978: 119) characterized Tokyo Japanese as a‘mora-counting, syllable language’, namely, a language where the mora is used as a counting
unit but the syllable serves as a bearer of the accent.
24 Hyman (2007: 11) notes that the rising contour tone in (19a) is more marked or ‘complex’ than its falling counterpart in (19b) in his analysis of African languages.

20  Haruo Kubozono

relies on H tone spreading in (20) rather than H tone shift in (21) to avoid thesame structure in (19a). It seems difficult to attribute this to the fact that KJ-Tairais the only dialect among KJ dialects that permits only one H tone in a word: there
would have been no problem if this system had chosen H tone shift as a solution
to avoid (19a) and applied it to Type A words only, just like other KJ dialects. By
choosing H tone spreading instead, however, KJ-Taira has successfully avoided
yielding a Type A-B asymmetry and the two marked structures in (19) at the sametime although it now violates the mora-based principle whereby the H tone isrealized on a single mora. On the other hand, other KJ dialects respect this morabased principle at the expense of the A-B asymmetry and the resultant falling
contour tone in (19b). A more detailed analysis is required to explain this interdialectal difference.
3.4.2. Avoidance of rising contour tone in H1
According to Kamimura’s (1937, 1941) observation, the rising contour tone in(19a) was permitted in word-initial position in the double H tone KJ systems
in 1930s. According to his description, H1 was generally linked to the second
mora, regardless of whether this mora is the non-head mora of a heavy syllable
as in (26a) or the head mora as in (26b): (A) and (B) denote Type A and Type B,
respectively.
(26)		Behavior of H1 in Kamimura’s old system
		a.		(A) zyoO.ki.SEn ‘steamship’						 zyoO.ki.SEn-ga ‘steamship-nominative’				(B) aN.saN ‘elder brother’		b.		(A) na.TU.ya.SU.mi ‘summer holiday’						 ka.ZAi.MOn ‘ornament’						 ka.ZAi.MOn-ga ‘ornament-nominative’				(B) a.SA.ga.O ‘morning glory (flower)’
While H1 in this old system permitted the rising contour tone in (19a), as
illustrated in (26a), the same H tone does not permit this contour tone any morein present-day KJ dialects. The marked structure in question is generally avoided
by H tone spreading in (20). In KJ-Kuwanoura, for example, word-initial heavy
syllables are high-toned from the beginning, as in (27a), while word-initial lightsyllables occasionally permit a low tone as in (27b).25(27)		Behavior of H1 in KJ-Kuwanoura
		a.		(A) ZYOO.ki.SEn						 ZYOO.ki.SEn-ga

25 These patterns resemble those found in Tokyo Japanese, where phrase-initial pitch riseoccurs if the initial syllable is monomoraic, e.g. /yo.KO.HA.MA/ ‘Yokohama’, /a.ME.
RI.KA/ ‘America’, while it is blocked if the syllable is bimoraic, e.g. /TOO.KYOO/ ‘Tokyo’,/KAI.DAN/ ‘staircase’.

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   21				(B) AN.saN
		b.		(A) NA.TU-ya.SU.mi (~na.TU-ya.SU.mi)						 KA.ZAI.MOn (~ka.ZAI.MOn)						 KA.ZAI.MOn-ga (~ka.ZAI.MOn-ga)
				(B) A.SA.ga.O (~a.SA.ga.O)
What is very interesting about KJ-Kuwanoura is that H2 is subject to H tone
shift to avoid the rising contour tone in (19a) in Type A words, as shown in (24a),while H1 is subject to H tone spreading to avoid the same marked structure asshown in (27a). This gives rise to an interesting asymmetry between H1 and H2,
which use different solutions within the same word to avoid the same tonal structure: e.g. /ZYOO.ki.SEn-ga/.
Incidentally, KJ-Teuchi does not permit the rising contour in H1 just like
KJ-Kuwanoura, but this should not be directly attributed to the H tone spreading in (20), but rather to the domain of the L tone intervening between the two
H tones, i.e. to the fact that the two H tones are separated from each other by one
low-toned syllable. This can be described as a step-by-step process in (28), where/ka.zai.mon-ka.ra/ ‘from the ornament’ (Type A) is used for illustration.
(28)
Derivational process in KJ-Teuchi
			 a. ka.zai.mon-ka.ra		 b. ka.zai.mon-ka.ra		 c. ka.zai.mon-ka.ra						
						
H1		L1		  H2 L2 		H1		  L1		  H2L2			 		H1	  L1 H2L2
3.4.3. Avoidance of falling contour tone
Having looked at the ways the rising contour tone in (19a) is avoided in presentday KJ dialects, let us now consider how the falling contour tone in (19b) is
avoided or tolerated in the same dialects. In Kamimura’s old system, this structure
was permitted both in H1 and in H2 as both tones were readily associated solely
with the head mora of heavy syllables. This is illustrated with Type A words in(29), where the relevant heavy syllables are underlined.
(29)		H1 and H2 in Kamimura’s old system
		a.		H1
				ni.GIi.ME.si, *ni.GII.ME.si ‘rice ball (colloquial)’
				ni.GIi.me.SI-ga, *ni.GII.me.SI-ga ‘rice ball-nominative’				ka.ZAi.MOn, *ka.ZAI.MOn ‘ornament’				ka.ZAi.MOn-ga, *ka.ZAI.MOn-ga ‘ornament-nominative’		b.		H2
				ka.ZAi.MOn ‘ornament
				KE.da.MOn ‘wild animal’
The situation is slightly different in KJ dialects today, where, interestingly, H1
and H2 behave differently from each other. As for H2, the falling contour in (19b)is still freely permitted in all KJ dialects including KJ-Teuchi, KJ-Kuwanoura, and22  Haruo Kubozono

KJ-Taira.26 This is the situation identical to (29b), which suggests that no change
has occurred in this respect over the past eighty years.
H1, on the other hand, does not permit the falling contour tone any longer inany present-day KJ dialects. Interestingly enough, different strategies are employed
to avoid the same structure across dialects. In KJ-Kuwanoura, it is remedied byrightward H tone spreading, as illustrated in (30), which clearly contrasts withwhat happens in Kamimura’s old system illustrated in (29a).
(30)		H1 spreading in KJ-Kuwanoura today
		NI.GII.ME.si, *NI.GIi.ME.si ‘rice ball (colloquial)’
			 cf. NI.GI.ri.ME.si ‘rice ball (polite)’
		NI.GII.me.SI-ga, *NI.GIi.me.SI-ga ‘rice ball-nominative’			 cf. NI.GI.ri.me.SI-ga ‘rice ball-nominative (polite)’		KA.ZAI.MOn, *KA.ZAi.MOn ‘ornament’		KA.ZAI.MOn-ga, *KA.ZAi.MOn-ga ‘ornament-nominative’		KA.ZAI.mon-KA.ra, *KA.ZAi.mon-KA.ra ‘from the ornament’
In KJ-Teuchi, in contrast, the same contour tone is avoided as H1 is assigned
from right to left to all phonological materials before the low-toned syllable. Thisapparent leftward shift of H1 is illustrated in (31).
(31)		H1 in KJ-Teuchi today
		NI.gii.ME.si, *NI.GIi.ME.si ‘rice ball (colloquial)’
			 cf. NI.GI.ri.ME.si ‘rice ball (polite)’
		NI.GII.me.SI-ga ‘rice ball-nominative’			 cf. NI.GI.RI.me.SI-ga ‘rice ball-nominative (polite)’		KA.zai.MOn, *KA.ZAi.MOn ‘ornament’		KA.zai.MOn-ga, *KA.ZAi.MOn-ga ‘ornament-nominative’In sum, both H1 and H2 tolerated the falling contour tone in (19b) in
Kamimura’s old system eighty years ago. These two tones behave differently in KJ
dialects today with respect to the same contour tone, giving rise to an interesting
H1/H2 asymmetry: the falling contour tone in (19b) is freely allowed in H2 but
not in H1. It will be interesting to ask why such an asymmetry occurs at all.
3.4.4. Summary
The discussion in this subsection has shown that on the whole KJ dialects are
mora-based rather than syllable-based. Seen from a historical viewpoint, however, they changed from a mora-only system to a hybrid system in which boththe mora and the syllable are used. On the one hand, Kamimura’s old system wasalmost exclusively mora-based since the positions of both H1 and H2 are calculated by counting the number of moras, from the end of the word in the case of

26 KJ-Taira permits only one H tone per word/phrase, which corresponds to H2 in the discussion here.

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   23H2 and from the beginning of the word in the case of H1. The only evidence forthe syllable in Kamimura’s system is the H2 shift in Type A words illustrated in(24a), which occurs to avoid a rising contour tone in (19a). This pattern persists inpresent-day KJ systems except KJ-Taira, which employs H tone spreading insteadto avoid the same marked structure.
In the course of time, the role of the syllable has expanded in KJ dialects as
H1 became sensitive to the syllable, but in different ways in different dialects. In
KJ-Kuwanoura, it is manifested in H1 tone spreading to avoid a rising contour
tone as in (27a) and a falling contour tone as in (30). Here, the entire syllable
now bears an H tone instead of showing a change in pitch level within the same
syllable.
The role of the syllable has expanded in KJ-Teuchi, too, but in a different
way. In this system, H1 spreads over a syllable or a stretch of syllables toward theword-initial position since H1 and H2 are separated by a low-toned syllable. This
leftward H1 spreading eliminated the possibility of the marked structures in (19a)and (19b).
The basic differences among the dialects are summarized in (32), where thesolutions used to avoid the relevant marked structure are given in brackets.
(32)		Summary
Rising contour

H1

Falling contour Rising contour

H2

Falling contour

Kamimura(1937, 1941)

permitted

permitted

KJ-Taira

N.A.

N.A.

KJ-Kuwanoura

not permitted not permitted Not permitted permitted[H tone spread- [H tone spread- in Type A
ing]
ing]
[H tone shift]

KJ-Teuchi

Not permitted permitted
in Type A[H tone shift]

Not permitted permitted[H tone spreading]

not permitted not permitted Not permitted permitted[H tone spread- [H tone shift] in Type Aing][H tone shift]3.5. H2 deletion in connected speech
Looking beyond the lexical level, KJ displays intriguing tonal phenomena at the
post-lexical level, too, where multiple words and bunsetsu are connected to form
utterances. The most noticeable phenomenon is H tone deletion by which H2 isdeleted in non-final positions in connected speech. Here, again, KJ dialects exhibit
regional differences.

24  Haruo Kubozono

3.5.1. H2 deletion in KJ-Teuchi
In KJ-Teuchi and many other KJ dialects today, H2 tends to delete in non-final
phrases in connected speech. This post-lexical process is observed most clearly in
KJ-Teuchi, where it occurs obligatorily so that non-deletion in non-final phrases
would create somewhat unnatural utterances. In this system, H2 deletion occurs
both in Type A and Type B words. Some typical examples are given in (33)
(Kubozono 2012b, c).
(33)		H2 deletion in connected speech in KJ-Teuchi
Type A
Type B

Sentence-final phrases Non-final phrases

NA.TU-ya.SU.mi

A.ME-ma.TU.ri

HA.RU-YA.su.MI

A.ME-MA.tu.RI

NA.TU-ya.su.mi…

gloss

summer holiday

A.ME-ma.tu.ri…

candy festival

A.ME-MA.tu.ri…

rain festival

HA.RU-YA.su.mi…

spring holiday

The same deletion phenomenon is observed in most other KJ dialects,
too, although to different degrees: this includes KJ-Sato, KJ-Kashima andKJ-Nakakoshiki, the last of which is the direct descendent of Kamimura’s native
dialect. H2 deletion in non-final positions is obligatory in KJ-Teuchi, but notalways in other dialects.
Two facts are worth emphasizing here. First, this process does not take placein short words with only one H tone, e.g. /a.ME-ga/ ‘candy-nominative’ (Type A),/me-GA/ ‘eye-nominative’ (Type B), although this sole tone corresponds to H2
in longer words with two H tones.27 Another noteworthy fact is that the H tone
deletion process does not trigger tonal neutralization of the two accent types. The
contrast between /NA.TU-ya.SU.mi/ ‘summer holiday’ (Type A) and /HA.RUYA.su.MI/ ‘spring holiday’ (Type B), for example, is well preserved in connectedspeech since they can still be differentiated from each other by the domain of H1
after H2 disappears: i.e. /NA.TU-ya.su.mi…/ vs. /HA.RU-YA.su.mi…/.
Given this, H tone deletion looks peculiar since it involves the deletion of
the lexically dominant H tone (H2) and the resultant promotion of the lexicallyredundant H tone (H1) to a distinctive one at the post-lexical level. In connectedspeech, H1 remains redundant in sentence-final position, but it comes to play a
distinctive role elsewhere as H2 disappears. It is very interesting to find that H2
dominates H1 at the lexical level but the dominance relationship is reversed at the
post-lexical level. This represents an opaque case (Kubozono 2012b).
Seen from a functional perspective, deletion of H2 in connected speech signals
non-finality, or that the sentence will still continue, whereas non-deletion signals
finality, or the end of the sentence. This is reminiscent of stress shift in English,
which occurs to avoid stress clash in connected speech (Liberman and Prince
1977): e.g. Jàpanése vs. Jàpanese péople (see Kubozono 2012c for more details about

27 Similarly, KJ-Taira does not show this phenomenon since it permits only one H tone perword.

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   25the resemblances between H2 deletion in KJ dialects and stress shift in English).
3.5.2. Old system in 1937
Interestingly, Kamimura (1937, 1941) did not report H2 deletion or any analogous
phenomenon in his own dialect (KJ-Nakakoshiki) or in any other KJ dialect hedescribed. The absence of an analogous process in this system can be understoodeasily if seen from a functional point of view. If H2 deletion had occurred in thisold system, it would have triggered neutralization of the two accent patterns since
H1 was basically fixed onto the second mora and did not differentiate the two patterns in this system. This situation is illustrated in (34), where hypothetical forms
are marked with asterisks.
(34)		Kamimura’s old system
Type A
Type B

Sentence-final phrases Non-final phrases

na.TU-ya.SU.misummer holiday*ha.RU-ya.su.mi…

spring holiday

a.ME-ma.TU.ri*a.ME-ma.tu.ri…

a.ME-ma.tu.RI*a.ME-ma.tu.ri…

ha.RU-ya.su.MI

gloss*na.TU-ya.su.mi…

candy festival

rain festival

The fact that Kamimura (1937, 1941) actually mentions no such phenomenon
suggests that H2 deletion had not taken place at his time, namely, that it is arelatively new development in the history of KJ dialects. This interpretation can besupported by the fact that H2 deletion is still not obligatory in many JK dialects
today, such as KJ-Sato. In these dialects, H2 may remain in non-final phrases inconnected speech, where one finds variations between a monomodal pattern and abimodal one: e.g. /NA.TU-ya.SU.mi…/ ~/NA.TU-ya.su.mi…/.
More crucial evidence for our historical analysis comes from KJ-Kuwanoura
today, which is most similar to Kamimura’s old system with respect to the behaviorof H1. In this system, H1 is restricted basically to the initial two moras. Since thedomain of H1 is restricted, this tone occurs rather independently of H2, as demonstrated in section 3.2 above. Interestingly, H2 deletion occurs in this system,
too, but in an incomplete fashion; it takes place only in Type B words. In Type A
words, H2 is phonetically reduced but is not deleted. This is illustrated in (35).
(35)		H2 deletion in KJ-Kuwanoura
Type A
Type B

Sentence-final phrases Non-final phrases

gloss

A.ME-ma.TU.ri

A.ME-ma.TU.ri…

candy festival

A.ME-ma.tu.RI

A.ME-ma.tu.ri…

rain festival

NA.TU-ya.SU.mi

HA.RU-ya.su.MI

NA.TU-ya.SU.mi… summer holiday

HA.RU-ya.su.mi… spring holiday

In (35), the distinction between Type A and Type B is preserved in non-final
phrases as well as sentence-final phrases since Type A words resist H2 deletion. In

26  Haruo Kubozono

this way, the tonal contrast is preserved although H1 is independent of H2.
In sum, the tonal distinction is well preserved in connected speech as well as
in citation forms in all KJ dialects. This is arguably the utmost requirement thatmust be obeyed across KJ dialects. In Kamimura’s old system, this requirement was
fulfilled by the absence of H2 tone deletion in connected speech: H1 was basicallyindependent of H2, and the latter remained distinctive in connected speech as wellas in citation forms. In KJ-Kuwanoura today, in contrast, H1 is more independentof H2, but H2 deletion occurs. The tonal distinction is nevertheless preserved inthis system, too, since H2 deletion is permitted only in one accent class. Finally, in
KJ-Teuchi today, H2 deletion occurs obligatorily in both accent classes. Since H1is entirely dependent on H2 in this system, the tonal distinction can be shown by
the domain of H1 alone in connected speech.
Considering these dialectal variations, it can be assumed that the H2 deletion
process is not necessarily triggered by the spreading of H1 and the subsequentcorrelation with H2 per se.28 It was triggered by H tone clash or an analogous factor (Kubozono 2012b, c), while it was probably accelerated by the emergence of acorrelation between H1 and H2. In KJ-Kuwanoura, H2 deletion was not allowed
to occur in the entire system since it would give rise to a loss of tonal contrast. In
KJ-Teuchi, on the other hand, it was allowed to take place in the entire systembecause H1 has become entirely dependent on H2 and replaced it as a distinctive
tone in connected speech, at least in non-final positions.
(36) gives a summary of the three types of systems with respect to H1 spreading, H1-H2 correlation and H2 deletion in connected speech. It is worth emphasizing here again that the tonal contrast is preserved in all systems, both in citation
forms and connected speech.
(36)		Comparison of the KJ dialects with respect to H1-H2 correlation, H2 deletion, and tonal contrast
H1 spreading

H1-H2
correlation

H2 deletionin connectedspeechTonal contrast
in connectedspeechKamimura’s old
systemrestricted

KJ-Kuwanoura

restricted

little correlation did not occur
preserved(no report ofthe occurrence)no correlation

occurs only inType B

preserved

KJ-Satopermitted
rather freely

considerable
correlation

occurs in bothaccent classes,
but not obligatorily

preserved

28 Kubozono (2012c) claims that the dependence of H1 on H2 was the prerequisite of
H tone deletion in KJ. This claim is too strong in light of the new evidence from KJKuwanoura, where H2 deletion occurs even though H1 is independent of H2. In this system,
H2 deletion did not give rise to loss of tonal contrast since it occurs only in one accent class.

Diversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   27KJ-Teuchi

permitted freely perfect correlation

obligatory inboth accent
classespreserved

3.6. Summary
To summarize the discussion so far, KJ dialects share some basic prosodic featureswith each other, while showing crucial differences among themselves. They exhibit
three common features. First, the position of H2 is calculated by counting moras
from the end of the word/phrase. Second, H2 is linked basically to the penultimate mora in Type A words and to the final mora in Type B words. Third, H2 inrelatively long words and the sole H tone in short words (or the sole H tone in
KJ-Taira’s single H tone system) do not generally permit heavy syllables with arising contour tone, i.e. (19a), although they permit heavy syllables with a falling
contour tone, i.e. (19b).
On the other hand, KJ dialects differ from each other in the following four
respects. First, KJ-Taira permits only one H tone per word or bunsetsu, while allother KJ dialects permit two H tones in relatively long words and phrases. Second,
the structure with H2 on the non-head mora of heavy syllables in (19a) is avoided
in different ways: H tone spreading in both accent classes (KJ-Taira) vs. H tone
shift in only Type A words (all other KJ dialects). This also separates KJ-Tairafrom all other KJ dialects. Third, KJ dialects fall into two groups depending upon
whether or not H1 correlates with H2. In KJ-Teuchi and most other KJ dialects,
H1 may be linked to the third and following moras/syllables, and bears a secondary distinctive role as its domain becomes dependent on the position of H2. In
KJ-Kuwanoura, on the other hand, H1 is basically restricted to the first two moras
and, hence, it still functions simply as a boundary tone that plays no distinctiverole. This system resembles Kamimura’s old system in this respect, which implies
that it represents the most conservative system among double H tone systems in
KJ. In all other KJ systems that permit more than one H tone per word, H1 has
expanded its domain and changed its nature in the past eighty years. KJ-Teuchi
represents the most advanced system that has undergone this change mostradically.
Finally, KJ dialects show differences with respect to H2 deletion in non-final
phrases in connected speech. This is a new rule in KJ dialects that was not observedin Kamimura’s old system. It occurs only in one accent class in KJ-Kuwanoura,
while it occurs in the entire system in other KJ dialects (except KJ-Taira, where H2deletion does not occur at all). KJ-Teuchi represents the most developed systemin the latter group, where H2 is now obligatorily deleted in both accent classes in
non-final phrases in connected speech.
4. Conclusions
4.1. Summary of main points
Overall, KJ dialects resist a change to neutralize the two accent classes/patterns,

28  Haruo Kubozono

Type A and Type B, both at the lexical and post-lexical levels. At the lexical level,
while H tone shift occurs in all KJ dialects except KJ-Taira to avoid assigning
H2 to the non-head mora of heavy syllables, it occurs only in Type A words. ThisA-B asymmetry can best be explained by a constraint prohibiting a loss of tonal
contrast. At the post-lexical level, H2 deletion did not take place in Kamimura’s
old system since it would have resulted in a complete loss of tonal contrast in connected speech. The same process does occur in present-day KJ-Kuwanoura, but
only in Type B words. This A-B asymmetry, too, can be attributed to the constraint
prohibiting a loss of tonal contrast. Thus, this anti-neutralization constraint serves
as an undominated constraint in the phonology of KJ dialects.
Finally, (37) shows the assumed historical divergences of KJ and its sister
dialects with a two-pattern system in south-western Kyushu. There is no doubtthat the ancestor of present-day KJ dialects derived from a common system as
Kagoshima and Nagasaki Japanese. This proto two-pattern system did not permit
more than one H tone per word. This feature has been inherited only by KJ-Tairaamong present-day KJ dialects. In the course of time, this single H tone systemdeveloped in a double H tone system in KJ dialects, or the system where two H
tones are permitted in relatively long words. This new system underwent further
divergences among KJ dialects, reaching the system of KJ-Kuwanoura, on the one
hand, and the system of KJ-Teuchi, on the other. Most other KJ dialects such as
KJ-Sato, KJ-Nakakoshiki, and KJ-Kashima developed in the same direction as
KJ-Teuchi, although to different degrees.
(37)		Historical divergences
Proto two-pattern system (with a single H tone per word)					Proto KJ									Kagoshima Japanese
Nagasaki Japanese…
									KJ-Taira								Proto double H tone system												KJ-Kuwanoura		KJ-Teuchi
		KJ-Sato		KJ-Nakakoshiki
4.2. Remaining questions
This study has revealed many interesting prosodic features of KJ dialects, but also
uncovered many new questions that remain for future work. The most importanttask will be to examine the pitch accent system of individual KJ dialects in moredetail. Equally important is to look at not only regional variations but also variations within each dialect, e.g. differences between different age groups in the samevillage. Given the accentual changes that have taken place in KJ over the past
eighty years, one should not be surprised to find some ongoing changes in theDiversity of Pitch Accent Systems in Koshikijima Japanese   29pitch accent systems of individual dialects today.
From a historical viewpoint, it will be interesting to ask about the historical
relationship between mora-counting and syllable-counting systems. KJ is by andlarge a mora-counting language, while its sister dialect of Kagoshima Japaneseis syllable-counting. Supposing that Kagoshima Japanese is the only syllablecounting system among two-pattern pitch accent systems in Japan, e.g. Nagasaki
Japanese (Sakaguchi 2001, Matsuura 2014) and Kikaijima Japanese (Uwano 2000,
2002, Kubozono 2011b), it will be more realistic to assume that a mora-counting
system changed into a syllable-counting system in the course of time than toassume the other way around. This analysis can be supported by the fact that KJ
dialects have strengthened the roles of the syllable over the past eighty years,
developing from a basically mora-only system to a hybrid system where the syllable as well as the mora plays pivotal roles. Detailed analysis of KJ dialects today
may well shed new light on the historical processes yielding the syllable-counting
system of Kagoshima Japanese from a mora-counting one.
Seen from a phonological perspective, KJ dialects may provide a new insight
into the issue of tonal neutralization. While the tonal distinction between TypeA and Type B is generally well preserved in KJ, it tends to be lost in short words.
Kamimura already noted eighty years ago that the Type A/B contrast is lost in thecitation forms of monomoraic nouns: /e/ ‘grip’ (Type A) and /e/ ‘picture’ (Type B)
does not tonally contrast with each other in citation forms, although its phrasal
forms kept the contrast as in /E-ga/ ‘grip-nominative’ vs. /e-GA/ ‘picture-nominative’. This is true in present-day KJ dialects, too, but this type of tonal neutralization has expanded to bimoraic nouns in some dialects. For example, middle-aged
or younger speakers in KJ-Kashima no longer keep the tonal contrast in bimoraic
nouns, e.g. /A.me/ ‘candy’ vs. /a.ME/ ‘rain’, at least in their citation forms. A
detailed examination of the KJ dialects may well illuminate the ways tonal contrasts are lost in the course of time.
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Author’s contact information:
National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
10-2 Midori-cho, Tachikawa, Tokyo 190-8561, Japan
kubozono@ninjal.ac.jp

[Received 2 March 2016;
Accepted 31 July 2016]【要 旨】

甑島方言アクセントの多様性
窪薗晴夫

国立国語研究所
本稿では鹿児島県甑島方言のアクセントについて，その特徴と多様性を論じる。甑島は鹿児島県の西 40 キロの東シナ海に浮かぶ孤島であり，その方言は母語話者が推定で約 3000 人しかいない危機方言である。鹿児島方言や長崎方言と同じ二型アクセント体系を有しているが，これらの姉妹方言とは異なる特徴がいくつも観察される。たとえば鹿児島方言とは違い，モーラを数える体系であり，また一つの語に複数のアクセントの山（重起伏）を持つ。甑島
方言のアクセントはさらに地域差が大きいという特徴を有しており，音節の役割や重起伏の形，文レベルにおける高音調削除規則などの点において多様な体系を有している。本稿では鹿児島方言や東京方言と比較しながら，この方言の特徴と多様性，そして一般言語学的意義を考察する。