The phonology of Japanese /r/: a panchronic account
type: Dataset
description: The aim of this study is to understand how /r/ emerged and developed in Proto-Japanese and how the conditions of its emergence shed light on its present phonological behavior. The paper first offers a review of the phonetic, phonological, and morpho-phonological characteristics of /r/ in Japanese through examination of a large array of empirical evidence. The picture that emerges is that of an unmarked, phonologically empty segment, confirming a number of previous studies, in particular that by Mester and Itoˆ (Language 65:258-293, 1989). I argue that /r/ primarily developed in Japanese as a default epenthetic consonant in the intervocalic position within the morphological domain of a stem and its affixes, through an 'emergence of the unmarked' mechanism before becoming a fully contrastive phoneme later on by virtue of a phonologization process. A formal account of this proposal within the framework of Optimality Theory is offered. It is shown that the phonological content of /r/ is acquired due to the application of well-formedness constraints (ONSET, ALIGN, MAXIO, DEPIO) as well as that of two sets of markedness constraints (FEATURAL AGREEMENT and HARMONY SCALE), which ensure that the null input is mapped to the least marked output in terms of phonological features.
landing page: 0925-8558
keyword: infoeu-reposemanticsarticle
keyword: japanese
keyword: japonais
keyword: journal-articles
keyword: liquides
keyword: liquids
keyword: optimality-theory
keyword: phonologie
keyword: phonology
keyword: r_
keyword: shslanguehumanities-and-social-scienceslinguistics
keyword: theorie-de-loptimalite
issued: 2026-05-06T05:57:27.879620
modified: 2026-05-06T05:57:27.879624
language: en
contact point: Organization
  fn: CCSD

test_moissonnage_selune
type: Agent

The phonology of Japanese /r/: a panchronic account
type: Distribution
format: HTML
access URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00951955
issued: 2026-05-06T05:57:27.894838
modified: 2026-05-06T05:57:27.864860