<研究論文>滋賀県湖北方言の動詞に付く助詞と接辞のアクセントについて

Abstract

Earlier linguistic analyses of the accent systems of Japanese dialects have mainly focused on word level pitch patterns. In the Kohoku dialect, however, the pitch patterns of smaller units, such as individual morphemes and particles, encode the distinction between different meanings of the predicates they attach to. This way, they are crucial for the interpretation of sentence meaning. In this paper, I illustrate how these pitch patterns of smaller units can contribute to an understanding of the syntax and semantics of the dialect. First, I will show how the particles =de and =to represent three different meanings by three different pitch patterns when attaching to the negative clitic -n. Second, I will examine the accentual differences between the imperative inflectional clitic -yo and the volitional clitic -yo. Based on this data, I will finally demonstrate that accentual strategies employ marked pitch patterns to convey differences in meaning, concluding that we should no longer ignore the importance of accentual information encoded in the pitch patterns of smaller units when describing Japan's languages and dialects.