日本語複合名詞の母音交替

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  • ニホンゴ フクゴウ メイシ ノ ボイン コウタイ
  • Ablaut of Japanese Compound Nouns

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This paper describes Japanese ablaut from the historical point of view.The ablaut is said to be a morphological phenomenon which occurred in ancient Japanese.　For example, the vowel differences of /ɑ/ and /e/ are seen in the words amagumo ‘rain cloud’ and amefuri ‘rainfall’; /u/ and /i/ in kamumiya ‘Shinto shrine’ and kamiwaza ‘work of God’; and also /o/ and /i/ in konoha ‘leaves of trees’ and kinobori ‘tree climbing’.These vowel changes of compounds are due to the strength of the boundary between two words, that is, morphemes.　When two morphemes construct a strong linking compound, a low vowel /ɑ/ and back vowels /u, o/ are pronounced, and when two morphemes construct a weak linking compound, front vowels, high front /i/ and mid front /e/ are pronounced.　We say that strong linking compounds have a morpheme boundary between two morphological elements and weak linking compounds have a word boundary between them.　These ablaut phenomena are explained by the front and back movements of the tongue in word-final positions.

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