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Part of
Topics in Theoretical Asian Linguistics: Studies in honor of John B. Whitman
Edited by Kunio Nishiyama, Hideki Kishimoto and Edith Aldridge
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 250] 2018
► pp. 97–122

Chapter 5
Autosegmental evaluative morphology in Japanese

Augmentative and diminutive mimetics

| Tohoku Gakuin University

Augmentatives and diminutives have never been recognized as such in grammars of Japanese though they constitute well-recognized classes in many languages, under the rubric of evaluative morphology. This study puts forward a view that the Japanese augmentatives and diminutives are found predominantly in the mimetic vocabulary, and especially as autosegmental subphonemic morphemes, thus escaping recognitions as such, in otherwise segmental agglutinative morphology of Japanese.

Keywords: mimetics, evaluative morphology, autosegmental morphology, subphonemic morpheme, augmentative, diminutive, intensification
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Augmentatives and diminutives: Evaluative morphology
  • 3.Mimetics in Japanese
    • 3.1Lexicological status
    • 3.2Morphophonology of mimetics
    • 3.3Positional phonesthemes of segmental phonemes
  • 4.Palatalization as diminutive
  • 5.Voicing as augmentative
  • 6.Evaluative morphology in Japanese mimetics
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.250.06toy
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