山形大学大学院社会文化システム研究科紀要

第17号（２０20）41－52

The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach
Mark Irwin（Yamagata University）

Laurence Labrune（Université Bordeaux Montaigne）
母音交替は，日本語の複合性を示す形態プロセスの1つである。イネ+カケ→イナカケのように，母音交替では，語末母音が複合語前部要素として現れる場合，その母音が交替するときがある。とはいえ，母音交替は必須ではなく，イネ+コケ→イネコケのように，稲は母音交替を示さずに現れる場合がある。母音交替の有無は，音韻上，形態上，語彙上等の法則に基づいて予測することはできないのである。母音交
替が現代日本語でどれほど生産的なのかという問題は，筆者が知る限りこれまで徹底的に調査されたことはないので，この目的のために（臨時語複合の調査の形で）実験テストを設計した。その結果（1）若年話者が使用する現代日本語では，母音交替が利用可能な意味でまだ生産的なプロセスであり，（2）前部要素のモーラ数が標準的な２モーラの母音交替出現率が，前部要素のモーラ数が非標準的な1モーラより高い，という分析が得られた。

1. Introduction: apophony, rendaku and compoundhood
Two morphophonological processes which mark compoundhood are apparent in the modern Japanese language.1
The first of these is apophony. Here, the final vowel of a lexeme may alter when it appears as the initial element (E1)
in a compound. In the Japanese tradition, the phenomenon is known as ten’on 転音 ʻaltered soundʼ or boinkōtai 母音
交替 ʻvowel alternationʼ. For convenience, lexemes may be grouped into three Types by the quality of their final vowel:
e~a (Type I), i~o (Type II) and i~u (Type III). Each Type thus contains two allomorphs of the same lexeme, which
differ only in their final vowel. The second vowel in each of the three Types, a~o~u, occurs only when the lexeme isbound. Such allomorphs are termed +apo and are exemplified in (1). On the other hand, the first vowel in each of thethree Types, e~i, may occur in both bound or unbound forms since apophony is not compulsory: ine ʻrice plantʼ, ki ʻtreeʼ
and tuki ʻmoon, monthʼ may, for example, appear bound without exhibiting apophony, as illustrated in (2). These allomorphs are termed -apo. Moreover, the appearance of the +apo or -apo E1 allomorph in a compound – the appearanceof the pattern in (1) or (2) below – is not empirically predictable in any phonological, morphological or lexical fashion.
Some compounds even display +-apo doublets: ama.tubu ~ ame.tubu ʻraindropʼ.
(1) ine+ʻrice plantʼ
kiʻmoon, monthʼ→ʻrackʼ
+ʻtreeʼ
tuki

kake
kage

ʻrack for drying rice sheavesʼ→ʻshadeʼ+yoʻnightʼina.kakeko.kageʻbowerʼ→tuku.yoʻmoonlightʼ

1

The additional suprasegmental phenomenon of accent will not be dealt with here. For thoroughgoing accounts of pitch accent incompounding, see McCawley (1968), Kubozono (1999, 2002, 2008, 2018) or Irwin & Zisk (2019).

－41－

The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)(2) ine+ʻrice plantʼʻthreshingʼ
+

ki

→

koki

ʻtreeʼ

ʻrice threshingʼ
→

me
ʻeyeʼ

+

tuki
ʻmoon, monthʼ

ine.kokiki.meʻgrain, textureʼ→nami
ʻequivalentʼ

tuki.nami
ʻmonthly, banal, triteʼThe second, more pervasive, morphophonological process marking compoundhood is rendaku, or sequential voicing, an alternation whereby the initial voiceless obstruent of a non-initial element (E2) in a compound may be voiced(hereafter +ren). This is illustrated in (3) for the four voiceless obstruents of Japanese, k~t~s~h. A number of different
factors are known to (quasi-)systematically dampen or block rendaku. These include Motoori-Lymanʼs Law (Motoori
1822; Lyman 1894), the right branch condition (Otsu 1980), and dvandva (Martin 1952). Rendaku is also known tovary markedly across vocabulary strata (Vance 1996, 2007; Irwin 2011:150–153).2 Despite these rules and constraints,
the appearance of the +ren form in a compound is – as with apophony – not wholly predictable in any phonological,
morphological or lexical way: rendaku sometimes occurs where it should not, fails to occur where it should, and explanations are not always available for its presence or absence. As with apophony, some compounds even display both+-ren doublets: mizu.tori ~ mizu.dori ʻwaterfowlʼ.
(3) k ~ g:ha+ʻtoothʼt ~ d:

hito

ao

+

zu
ʻfigure, markʼ

tuma

+

same

→

hosi
ʻstarʼ

hito.dumaʻmarried womanʼ→ʻsharkʼ+ha.gukiʻgumsʼ

ʻwifeʼ

ʻblueʼ
h ~ b:→

ʻstemʼ

ʻpersonʼs ~ z:

kuki

ao.zameʻmako sharkʼ

→zu.bosiʻbullʼs eyeʼThe two phenomena share a number of properties: they are both non-compulsory morphophonological devices signalling compoundhood by means of an allomorphy manifested either immediately to the left (apophony), or immediately to the right (rendaku), of the element boundary. The behaviour of +apo and -apo allomorphs in apophony ismirrored by that of +ren and -ren allomorphs in rendaku. The behaviour of the marked and unmarked allomorphs ofboth phenomena is identical: while the unmarked allomorph may occur in either simplex words or compounds, themarked allomorph is restricted to compounds3. The foregoing is summarized in Table 1.

2

For more detailed general discussion of rendaku in general, see Vance (2015), Vance & Irwin (2016) or Irwin & Zisk (2019).

3

A few exceptions, such as ba ‘place’, zama ‘appearance’ (derogatory) or gawa ‘side’, exist for rendaku.

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The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)

phenomenon
compulsory

apophonyno
immediately left of elementboundaryno vowel change（-apo）
simplex words and compounds
vowel change（+apo）
compounds only

site
unmarked
allomorphmarkedallomorphshows
occurs inshows
occurs inrendakuno
immediately right of elementboundary-rensimplex words and compounds+rencompounds only

Table 1: Summary of apophony and rendaku
In other respects, however, apophony and rendaku differ. Only a very small proportion of the total Japanese lexicon
is subject to apophony: a tiny fossilized subset of 22 native Japanese nouns consisting of 2 moras or fewer. These arelisted in (4): see Labrune & Irwin (forthcoming) for further detail.
(4) e~aame~ama ʻrainʼ, ame~ama ʻheavenʼ, ine~ina ʻrice plantʼ, ue~uwa ʻtopʼ, ure~ura ʻend, tipʼ,kaze~kaza ʻwindʼ, kane~kana ʻmetalʼ, koe~kowa ʻvoiceʼ, sake~saka ʻalcoholʼ, suge~sugaʻsedgeʼ, take~taka ʻbambooʼ, tane~tana ʻseedʼ, te~ta ʻhandʼ, tume~tuma ʻfingernailʼ,
hune~huna ʻboatʼ, me~ma ʻeyeʼ, mune~muna ʻ(human) chestʼ, mune~muna ʻroofbeamʼ

i~oki~ko ʻtree, woodʼ, hi-ho ʻfireʼ

i~ukami~kamu ʻgodʼ, tuki~tuku ʻmoonʼOn the other hand, almost all native Japanese lexemes beginning in a voiceless obstruent are subject to rendaku, withthe phenomenon having even established itself, albeit to a limited extent, in the Sino-Japanese stratum. This differencein scale means that, in contrast to the mass of lexemes in which rendaku can manifest itself and create a tacit awarenessof its productivity amongst non-linguist Japanese L1 speakers, or even L2 speakers, the same cannot be said for apophony whose tiny number of applicable nouns is a closed set.
This probably explains why apophony has been given so little attention in the linguistic literature. Even if apophonyis far less conspicuous than rendaku in contemporary Japanese, it is still nevertheless a pervasive process which cannot
be considered marginal: some apophonic compounds occur with extremely high token frequency in the language. The
issue of how productive apophony is in the contemporary language constitutes a real issue, which has never been thoroughly investigated to our knowledge.
The issue of productivity, the different notions the term has in the morphological literature and the lack of consensus
among scholars about its definition makes it necessary for us to clarify what we mean by ʻproductivityʼ. Schematicallyspeaking, it is commonly accepted that productivity has three different aspects: profitability (among all the possible
words that can be created by a given process, how many actually exist?); regularity (is the process predictable on thebasis of properties attached to the base it applies to?); and availability (is the process still active for native speakers, i.e.
are new lexical units still being created, however many there may be?). For additional detail, see Corbin (1987), Plag
(2003), Baayen & Lieber (1991), Bauer (2001) and others. A dictionary-based corpus like the one used by Labrune &Irwin (forthcoming) is more suited to investigate the regularity issue. One would need a textual corpus to test the productivity of apophony as a morphological process regularly and actively involved in the production of new words incontemporary Japanese. The third aspect, availability, is one of the two issues that this study will test.
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The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)

A by-product of our research methodology allows us, in addition, to address the question of redundancy. It is not
diﬃcult to find compounds where +apo and +ren co-occur, as in (5). Here, compoundhood is doubly marked on bothsides of the element boundary. At what statistical level of frequency does such redundancy occur? Like the productivityof apophony, is its frequency governed by the phonology, lexical stratum or semantics of E1, E2 or the compound as awhole?
(5) ame+ʻrainʼ
ʻtreeʼ

→ʻdoorʼ
+

ki

to
tati

ama-doʻshutterʼ→ʻstandʼko-datiʻthicketʼWith this background in mind, this study addresses two research questions:
1. To what extent is apophony still productive (in the sense available) in contemporary Japanese?
2. How do apophony and rendaku interact with each other, and to what extent is their combination or non-combination frequent and predictable?
To this end, we designed an experimental test which takes the form of a nonce compound survey.

2. Methodology: The Survey
To address the question of productivity of the apophonic process, it was decided that the nonce compounds in thesurvey should include examples with E1s which are known (after Labrune & Irwin forthcoming) to frequently show a+apo allomorph. To address the question of redundancy in compoundhood marking, i.e. the ʻdouble markingʼ of bothapophony and rendaku, it was decided that nonce compounds in the survey should include examples with E2s thatappear regularly as +ren (see Irwin 2016). Further, it was decided that the nonce compound survey:
・ should consist of two-element nonce compounds only・ that an E1 should belong to the overwhelmingly dominant apophony Type I only・ that a compoundʼs potential meaning be readily intelligible
・ that the orthography employed to write a nonce compound not have a potential alternative reading・ that the survey should take no longer than 5 minutes to complete
・ in order to maximize native Japanese readings, that Sino-Japanese elements be avoided and all E2s be
restricted to the native or foreign strata
Table 2 shows the 28 nonce compounds on which the survey respondents were questioned, listed in the randomizedorder they appeared in the questionnaire. Every E1 may undergo apophony and appears in (4) above. Each is used atleast twice across a maximum of three unique nonce compounds. As shown in the third column, the majority (24/28)
of E2s were drawn from the native stratum, the remaining 4 from the foreign stratum. Of the 24 native stratum E2s, 12
have +ren forms and 12 do not fulfil the criteria in (3) and never undergo rendaku. Each E2 appears in the nonce survey－44－

The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)

once only. The fourth column shows the English gloss for a given nonce compound and is the semantic interpretationof the authors – others are possible. The rightmost column shows the lemmas of both elements: e.g. HUNE represents
the lemma of both +apo huna and -apo hune, while HATA represents the lemma of both +ren bata and -ren hata.
nonce compoundE2 typeEnglish gloss

lemmas1.

船旗

rendakuable

ship’s flag

HUNE+HATA

2.

雨ダンス

foreignrain dance

AME+DANSU3.

稲病

non-rendakuable

rice blight

INE+YAMAI

4.

金罠

non-rendakuable

metal trap

KANE+WANA

5.

声虫

non-rendakuablenoise bug

KOE+MUSI

6.

手薬

rendakuable

hand ointment

TE+KUSURI

7.

風山

non-rendakuable

Mount Wind

KAZE+YAMA

8.

酒腹

rendakuable

booze belly

SAKE+HARA

9.

爪エステ

foreignfingernail care

TUME+ESUTE

10.

目種

rendakuable

mote

ME+TANE11.

上所

rendakuable

place up on top

UE+TOKORO

12.

胸匂い

non-rendakuable

smell of the chest

MUNE+NIOI

13.

風マップ

foreignwind map

KAZE+MAQPU

14.

酒豆

non-rendakuable

bean eaten with saké

SAKE+MAME

15.

船猫

non-rendakuable

ship’s cat

HUNE+NEKO

16.

爪屋

non-rendakuable

fingernail salon

TUME+YA

17.

雨風呂

rendakuable

rain bath

AME+HURO

18.

上釘

non-rendakuabletopmost nail

UE+KUGI

19.

目脇

non-rendakuable

corner of the eye

ME+WAKI20.

手肌

non-rendakuable

skin of the hand

TE+HADA21.

稲蝉

rendakuable

rice cicada

INE+SEMI22.

胸皮

rendakuable

skin of the chest

MUNE+KAWA

23.

声心rendakuable

core of the voice

KOE+KOKORO

24.

風国

rendakuablewindy country

KAZE+KUNI

25.

爪花

rendakuable

flower painted on fingernail

CUNE+HANA

26.

雨蛇

non-rendakuable

rain snake

AME+HEBI27.

金柱

rendakuable

metal column

KANE+HASIRA

28.

酒コーヒー

foreigncoffee with saké

SAKE+KOOHIITable 2: Nonce compounds employed in the survey
The survey was administered in written form to a total of 616 Yamagata University first-year students over an 11-day
period between 10–20 April, 2017. Respondents were seated in classes of 30-40 students and given 5 minutes to complete the survey reproduced in Appendix A. No instructions were given beyond reading aloud the introductory sentence. Of the 616 students, 56.7% were male and 43.2% female (0.2% no response). The vast majority of students,
94.6%, were 18- or 19-years-old, with 3.6% 20 or 21, 0.6% 22 or 23 and 1.0% over 24 years old.
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The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)

3. Results and discussion
Table 3 shows the results of an analysis by apophony rate. Each question has four possible results: +apo, -apo, noanswer and ʻotherʼ (on which more below). The top 5 questions for each result type are shaded. Overall, the proportionof answers which were +apo was 25.6%. This figure does suggest strongly that the phenomenon is not as unproductive
and unconscious as initially hypothesized. Five nonce compounds showed apophony more than 50% of the time:
HUNE+HATA, UE+TOKORO, HUNE+NEKO, ME+HURO and INE+SEMI. Conversely, five nonce compounds
showed apophony less than 2% of the time, four of these having a monomoraic E1 (TE or ME). This will be discussed
further below. ʻOtherʼ answers made up 7.7% of the total: not a particularly satisfactory result. Two nonce compounds
in particular, INE+YAMAI and KANE+WANA, evinced a particularly egregious number of ʻotherʼ answers. The answers
ina.byoo and ine.byoo (split approximately evenly between forms with and without apophony, in both cases containinga Sino-Japanese E2) were common for the former; kin.wana, with a Sino-Japanese E1, was common for the latter.
Another noteworthy feature is the important disparity between compounds with regards to apophony: from 0.6% to60.1%. But the most striking result is probably that a non-negligible number of nonce compound (6) exhibit a +apo rateof over 50%, which strongly suggests that apophony is still available in contemporary Japanese as a marker ofcompoundhood.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28

HUNE+HATA
AME+DANSUINE+YAMAI
KANE+WANA
KOE+MUSI
TE+KUSURI
KAZE+YAMA
SAKE+HARA
TUME+ESUTE
ME+TANE
UE+TOKORO
MUNE+NIOIKAZE+MAQPU
SAKE+MAME
HUNE+NEKO
TUME+YA
AME+HURO
UE+KUGI
ME+WAKITE+HADA
INE+SEMI
MUNE+KAWA
KOE+KOKORO
KAZE+KUNITUME+HANA
AME+HEBI
KANE+HASIRA
SAKE+KOOHII

TOTAL

+apo
-apo
no answer
60.1%
34.6%
0.0%
20.6%
76.3%
0.0%
18.0%
48.4%
0.3%
24.5%
55.0%
0.0%
27.6%
69.5%
0.2%
1.1%
96.4%
0.2%
28.7%
64.6%
0.0%
19.8%
68.5%
0.3%
0.6%
96.8%
0.0%
1.1%
87.0%
0.3%
53.9%
39.3%
0.3%
37.5%
54.2%
0.5%
9.4%
86.2%
0.2%
30.7%
62.8%
0.3%
60.9%
36.0%
0.3%
5.2%
90.3%
0.2%
51.6%
35.9%
0.0%
39.9%
54.4%
0.6%
1.5%
92.7%
0.5%
0.0%
98.5%
0.0%
52.4%
34.9%
1.1%
34.1%
54.9%
0.6%
20.1%
75.5%
0.2%
27.1%
64.6%
0.5%
5.4%
87.0%
0.3%
48.1%
43.5%
0.3%
31.3%
52.1%
0.3%
4.4%
94.2%
0.5%
25.6%
66.2%
0.3%
（4,409）（11,421）（50）
Table 3: Nonce compound apophony rates
－46－

other
5.4%
3.1%
33.3%
20.5%
2.8%
2.3%
6.7%
11.4%
2.6%
11.5%
6.5%
7.8%
4.2%
6.2%
2.8%
4.4%
12.5%
5.0%
5.4%
1.5%
11.5%
10.4%
4.2%
7.8%
7.3%
8.1%
16.2%
1.0%
7.9%
（1,368）

total（n）
100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0% (616)100.0%（17,248）

The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)

Table 4 shows the data in Table 3 grouped by E1. Here, ʻno answerʼ and ʻotherʼ data are ignored and E1 are sorted byaverage apophony rate (AAR), the most productive first. The AAR across all 15,830 datapoints was 27.9% No clear
trends were evident and the accentual issue requires further investigation.
E1
HUNE
UE
INE
AME
MUNE
KANE
KOE
KAZE
SAKE
TUME
ME
TE
TOTAL

（CV）CV. （CV）CV.
n
u
u
n
i
m
a
n
u
n
a
o
z
a
k
a
m
u
m
t
-

AAR
63.1%
50.0%
45.8%
43.6%
39.6%
34.3%
24.8%
23.3%
19.6%
3.9%
1.4%
0.6%
27.9%
Table 4: Average apophony rate analysis by initial element

accent
HL
LH（H）
HL
HL
LH（L）
HL
HL
LH（H）
LH（H）
LH（H）
H（L）
H（L）

length
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1

n
1,180
1,155
947
1,700
1,113
1,004
1,187
1,729
1,727
1,757
1,123
1,208
15,830

It is interesting to compare the AAR-based ranking in Table 4 with that in Labrune & Irwin (forthcoming) for thesame E1s. This study was based on dictionary data extracted from the reference dictionary Kōjien (Shinmura 2006),
and can thus be taken as a reliable indicator of the type frequency of apophony within the Japanese lexicon in
general.
data reproduced
Labrune &rank
rank
from Table 4
Irwin data
HUNE
63.1%
1
95.2%
1
UE
50.0%
2
88.8%
2
INE
45.8%
3
74.6%
4
AME
43.6%
4
79.4%
3
MUNE
39.6%
5
66.7%
6
KANE
34.3%
6
57.8%
9
KOE
24.8%
7
53.1%
10
KAZE
23.3%
8
60.0%
8
SAKE
19.6%
9
72.4%
5
TUME
3.9%
10
66.1%
7
ME
1.4%
11
12.0%
11
TE
0.6%
12
9.3%
12
Table 5:Comparison between experimental nonce word data（this paper）
and dictionary data（Labrune & Irwin forthcoming）, ranked by
E1 apophony rate
E1

Table 5 shows the overall ranking is not overly different and similar tendencies may be observed. Most strikingly,
the two top (HUNE, UE) and two bottom (ME, TE) ranked E1s are identical in both data sets.4 The main difference
between the two rankings lies in the position of SAKE and TUME which have a higher rank in the dictionary data than
4

E1s which do not occur in the experimental test have been ignored in calculating the ranking of the dictionary data.

－47－

The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)in the nonce word data. The divergence here may be partly explainable by the fact that they were among the four E1s
combined with a foreign E2 in the nonce word experiment, a factor shown to dampen the use of the +apo allomorph
by Labrune & Irwin (forthcoming).
These results strongly suggest that apophony is not an erratic, fossilized phenomenon in the contemporary language.
The convergence in ranking between experimentally tested nonce words and existing dictionary words shows thatapophony is still an active morphological process in the Japanese language.
The second Interesting observation to be made is that the type frequency of +apo forms in the lexicon finds reflectionin the nonce word +apo rate. The higher the number of +apo forms for a given lexeme in the general Japanese lexicon,
the higher the number of +apo readings assigned by speakers in the experimental test. The proportion is consistently
around 2/3 for the 6 top items. In contrast, token frequencies in the lexicon do not seem to exert any influence on
speaker choice in the nonce word experiment. If they did, then we would expect nonce compounds with a TE E1 toexhibit the same AAR as nonce compounds with an INE E1, since TE and INE both possess the same number of +apo
compounds (44) in the reference dictionary Kōjien according to Labrune & Irwin (forthcoming), despite their AAR
being quite different (9.3% vs. 74.6%). The nonce word survey shows that it is the AAR rate which speakers haveinternalized and are sensitive to, rather than the rough number of +apo compounds for a given E1.
A third noteworthy feature of the results in Table 5 is that the AAR in the experimental test is always lower than thatof the dictionary date. We interpret this as signifying that, although still available to speakers as a compounding process, apophony is nevertheless losing regularity (as defined above, and taken as one of the various productivity indices)in contemporary Japanese. But apophony is not dead.
Table 6 shows the data in Table 3 grouped by E2. Here too, ʻno answerʼ and ʻotherʼ data are ignored. The top third of
Table 5 makes it clear that there is no significant difference in AAR depending on whether the E2 was rendakuable ornot. There was, however, as can be seen from the lower third of Table 6, a significant dampening of apophony when
the E2 was from the foreign stratum. With E2 element length, indicated in the middle of Table 6, we see a statistically
non-significant reduction in AAR the further away an E2 moves from the canonical length of 2 moras (other = 1 mora
and 4 mora E2s combined).
E2
AARnrendakuable
32.9%
6,707
non-rendakuable
29.5%
6,730
2-moras33.0%
9,597
3-moras
23.6%
5,038
other
4.9%
1,195
native stratum
31.2%
13,437
foreign stratum
9.0%
2,393
TOTAL
27.9%
15,830
Table 6:Average apophony rate analysis by final element
To examine the question of redundancy in compoundhood – to what extent and why a compound might exhibit both
+apo and +ren – we whittled the data down to those nonce compounds containing a +ren possible E2. These 6,707
datapoints have an AAR of 32.9% and an average rendaku rate of 59.3% (somewhat lower than we would expect: +ren
across the native stratum as a whole is 70.8% according to Irwin (2016)). The figures in Table 7 show that while one
marker of compoundhood only was the most common result (45.4%), redundancy (the appearance of both compound－48－

The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)markers) still occurred in just under a quarter (23.4%) of all datapoints. However, these data include compounds witha monomoraic E1 which, as we have seen in Table 4, have extremely low AARs. Further excluding all compounds witha monomoraic E1 yields the data in Table 8. These 5,563 datapoints have a higher AAR of 39.4%, though a somewhat
lower average rendaku rate of 55.5% (again, somewhat lower than we would expect). By this analysis, redundancy
levels rise to 28.0% of all datapoints.
E2nno marker（-apo AND -ren）
31.2%
2,091
one marker（+apo OR +ren）
45.4%
3,047
apophony only（+apo -ren）
9.5%
637
rendaku only（-apo, +ren）
35.9%
2,410
both markers（+apo AND +ren）
23.4%
1,569
TOTAL
100%
6,707
Table 7:R edundancy analysis（including monomoraic
initial elements）
E2
n
no marker（-apo AND -ren）
33.1%
1,841
one marker（+apo OR +ren）
39.0%
2,167
apophony only（+apo -ren）
11.5%
637
rendaku only（-apo, +ren）
27.5%
1,530
both markers（+apo AND +ren）
28.0%
1,555
TOTAL
100%
5,563
Table 8:Redundancy analysis excluding monomoraic initial
elements）
Table 9 shows the data in Table 8 organized by nonce compound: i.e. by the 10 nonce compounds appearing in thesurvey (Table 3) which had both a bimoraic E1 and a +ren possible E2. Each of these compounds have between 514
and 589 datapoints, for an average of 556. A large degree of variation is apparent between those which exhibited majority levels of redundancy (AME+HURO and UE+TOKORO at 58.8% and 57.0%, respectively) and those which exhibited hardly any (TUME+HANA at just 4.2%). A longer E2 appears to promote redundancy. A 3-mora E2 (n = 1,677)
exhibits redundancy 37.9% of the time as against with a 2-mora E2 (n = 3,886) which exhibits redundancy 23.7% of
the time. A Mann-Whitney U test on this data proved non-significant, however.
% +aponAND+ren E2 length
AME+HURO
58.8%
2
539
UE+TOKORO
57.0%
3
574
INE+SEMI
42.0%
2
538
KANE+HASIRA
36.6%
3
514
HUNE+HATA
22.0%
2
583
KOE+KOKORO
20.4%
3
589
SAKE+HARA
17.5%
2
544
MUNE+KAWA
13.0%
2
548
KAZE+KUNI
10.4%
2
565
TUME+HANA
4.2%
2
569
TOTAL
28.0%
5,563
Table 9: Redundancy analysis by final element length－49－

The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)

Our final analysis, shown in Table 10, examines E1 accent pattern. When analysed by the accent pattern of E1, we
find again that there is a tendency for those with an HL pattern (n = 2,763) to exhibit redundancy (35.4%), as against
those with an LH pattern (n = 2,800; redundancy = 20.6%). While, as we have already seen, HL E1s exhibit asignificantly higher level of redundancy than LH E1s, it is also clear that LH E1s exhibit a significantly higher rate ofwhat might be termed ʻcompound marker immunityʼ, i.e. both -apo and -ren. An E1 with a LH accent pattern is both
-apo and -ren 43.7% of the time, as against a figure of 22.3% for an E1 with an HL accent pattern.
all
HL E1 LH E1
no marker（-apo AND -ren）
33.1%
22.3%
43.7%
one marker（+apo OR +ren）
39.0%
42.2%
35.7%
apophony only（+apo -ren）
11.5%
12.6%
10.3%
rendaku only（-apo, +ren）
27.5%
29.6%
25.4%
both markers（+apo AND +ren）
28.0%
35.4%
20.6%
n
2,763
2,800
Table 10: Analysis by initial element accent pattern

n
1,841
2,167
637
1,530
1,555
5,563

4. Discussion & Conclusions
The foregoing analysis has elicited the following:i.

Apophony is still a productive process, in the sense that it is available, in contemporary Japanese as spoken byvery young adult speakers (15,830 datapoints).

ii.

An E1 of 2 moras in length is more likely to show apophony than an E1 of 1 mora (15,830 datapoints).

iii.

Apophony was dampened when E2 was from the foreign stratum (15,830 datapoints).

iv.

Limiting the discussion to 2-mora E1s, those with an HL accent pattern seem to be more likely to show
apophony (13,499 datapoints), and to show redundancy (5,563 datapoints), than those with an LH(H) accentpattern.

Result (i) is a groundbreaking result as the productivity of apophony has never been tested before.
With result (ii), we note that rendaku shows a similar trend. This was demonstrated in Irwin & Lyddon (2016), whohypothesized that homophony avoidance was the most likely explanation. The finding is also in accordance with
Labrune & Irwin (forthcoming), who label this as the PRINCIPLE OF INITIAL MORA INTEGRITY. That study found that while an
E1 of 2 moras or longer showed an AAR of .617, a single-mora E1 evinced an AAR of only .137.
As for (iii), Labrune & Irwin (2020; forthcoming) once again came to a similar conclusion, although we must qualify
the foregoing by pointing out that the number of datapoints, at only 8, was very small. Moreover, it has long been
known that rendaku fails to be triggered at all when the second element is from the foreign stratum, so it should not be
surprising to discover that apophony evinces the same tendency.
Finally, (iv) requires further and more detailed investigation. We have no idea as to why an HL accent pattern should
favour +apo, and intend to pursue the matter further in a future nonce survey whose compounds will be selected basedon accent patterns.

－50－

The Productivity of Apophony in Japanese: An Experimental Approach (Mark Irwin)

References
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Sanseidō.
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Appendix: The Survey
下記のアンケートは日本語音韻論研究プロジェクトの一部です。これから記入しする答案・情報等を第三者に提供すること一切はありません。ご協力有難うございます。

次の四つの質問の中から，それぞれ一つだけ選んで丸をつけて下さい。
1.

年齢：

18⊖19才

2.

性別：

男

3.

私は日本語母語話者です。

4.

私はこのアンケートを以前，記入したことがあります。

20⊖21才22⊖23才

24才以上

女ではありません。

初めて記入します。
左欄にある熟語は臨時語（その場限りに用いる既成の語ではない）ですが，意味が大体わかる方が多いのではないかと思います。もし，仮に，この単語を「訓読み」するとしたら，どう読むでしょうか。 辞書を使わず，他人と相談せずに，最も適当と思う読み方を右の空欄にひらがなで記入して下さい。
例 家虫

いえむし

13. 風マップ______________

26. 雨蛇____________________________

1.

船旗______________

14. 酒豆______________

27. 金柱2.

雨ダンス______________

15. 船猫______________

28. 酒コーヒー ______________

3.

稲病______________

16. 爪屋______________

4.

金罠______________

17. 雨風呂______________

5.

声虫______________

18. 上釘______________

6.

手薬______________

19. 目脇______________

7.

風山______________

20. 手肌______________

8.

酒腹______________

21. 稲蝉

______________

9.

爪エステ

______________

22. 胸皮______________

10. 目種______________

23. 声心______________

11. 上所______________

24. 風国______________

12. 胸匂い______________

25. 爪花______________－52－