Shu Hirata

In this presentation, I argue that interestingly, voiced obstruent geminates are found in the Owase dialect. A previous study listed the Japanese dialects that allow for voiced obstruent geminates; however, the list did not include the Owase dialect. Therefore, this presentation refers to a novel discovery.

In this presentation, I argue that a phenomenon that is similar to tone sandhi is found in the Owase dialect: Words with high-level pitch can lose their high pitch when they follow words with final-high tone and level tone.

In this presentation, I argue that a moraic oral obstruent on which an accent falls is found in the Owase dialect. There are four kinds of special morae in Japanese phonology: the second morae of diphthongs (/J/), the second morae of long vowels (/R/), moraic nasals (/N/), and moraic oral obstruents (/Q/). /Q/ has the weakest phonological independence among the four special morae and generally does not receive an accent. However, interestingly, an accented /Q/ is observed in the Owase dialect, where pre-accenting morphemes in compound nouns are found. When the pre-accenting morpheme begins with /k/ and the morpheme that precedes the pre-accenting morpheme ends with /ku/, the accented /Q/ appears.