A Phonological, Morpho-Syntactical Study of Nominal Compounding in Japanese

Abstract

This paper provides a distributed-morphological analysis of nominal compounding in Japanese in an effort to pin down the phonological, morphosyntactic mechanism in nominal compounding. The findings reveal that the semantic relation between the N₁and N₂ has seven variations: Object + Tran._conj.; Instrument + Tran._conj.; Modifier - Tran._conj.; Place - Tran._conj.; Method - Tran._conj.; Cause - Tran._conj.; and Subject –tran. _conj..Among the variations, sequential voicing is only subject to [N_object - N _TRAN.conj.] nominal compounds. Moreover, during the process of forming a nominal compound, the second constituents (N₂) rendered by aspirate consonants /k/ and /t/ are very likely to receive sequential voicing. When the N₂ is conveyed by consonant /c/ and fricative consonant /h/, sequential voicing does not occur. Syntactically, Japanese nominal compounds are all right-headed. The formation process of all nominal compounds is a matter of ‘word derivation’ given the fact that, (i) √Root and the latter added morphemes are not semantically associated and it is after the merger that the semantic interpretation is established, and (ii) the N-N’s category is determined by the added morphemes. In addition, lexicalisation plays an essential role during the nominal compounding process. Crucially, lexicalisation only applies to the[N_object - N _TRAN.conj.] type of compound.