<研究ノート>大分県杵築市方言の名詞アクセント資料とその歴史的考察

Abstract

The Kitsuki dialect spoken in Oita Prefecture is one of the dialects belonging to Gairin type, whose merger pattern of accentual classes, so called Kindaichi Gorui, has been regarded as I-1.2/3 and II-1.2/3/4.5. In this paper, we present simple nouns and compound nouns in the Kitsuki dialect with particular reference to their accents, and discuss some issues regarding the history of Japanese accent. In the Kitsuki dialect, words belonging to Class 5 of 3-mora nouns appear with two different tonal patterns, HLL and LHL. This 'one to many' correspondence between accentual class and tonal patterns may be due to phonological split, because these two tonal patterns, HLL and LHL, are in nearly complementary distribution. Close inspection of the data of similar dialects (or neighboring dialects) assembled by Hirayama (1992-93) suggests that such a phonological split or 'one to many' correspondence between accentual class and tonal patterns is found in the other dialects. Our findings, therefore, shed new light on the history of accent of Japanese dialects. We also show that both the length by mora-counting of the first element of the compound and the length of the compound itself determine the tonal pattern of noun compounds, while earlier studies argued that the tonal pattern of noun compounds is determined by the accent of the first element of the compound in Gairin dialects.