Noriko Yamane: The Implicational Distribution of Prenasalized Stops in Japanese

This article explores and formalizes the regularity of 
prenasalization in Japanese from the viewpoint of Optimality Theory (henceforth 
OT, Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1995).  
Prenasalization in Japanese is not simply an allophonic variation, but a chain
shift phenomenon induced by voicing of stops in intervocalic
positions.  Furthermore, prenasalization of stops exhibits
cross-dialectal variation, but it is restricted to four types
only.

The four systems show an implicational relation not only in the
geographical continuum observed in the Japanese archipelago but
also in the chronological continuum witnessed through the
historical stages.  This observation accords basically with the
assumption that "remnants of the past survive in remote regions"
(Yanagida 1930).

In OT, synchronic and diachronic variations have been given a 
natural and principled account with constraint permutations (Anttila & 
Cho 1998, Cho 1998, among others), and our further crucial 
assumption is that the variations between grammars are along with a 
continuum of fixed markedness scales.  Thus, this paper demonstrates that 
all of the four systems fit into the factorial typology that emerges
from the minimal demotion of a Faithfulness constraint among the
fixed constraint hierarchy on place markedness.