Chinese Final Stops in Japanese: A Critique of Vance's Theory

Timothy Vance has recently argued that irregular correspondences between Sino-Japanese and Middle Chinese syllable-final stops are due to false back-formation. This paper demonstrates that such an account is not only inconsistent with certain facts of Japanese historical phonology but also unnecessa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the American Oriental Society 1988-10, Vol.108 (4), p.627-631
Main Author: Unger, J. Marshall
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Allomorphs
Brief Communication
Palatal consonants
Pronunciation
Stop consonants
Velar consonants
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Summary:Timothy Vance has recently argued that irregular correspondences between Sino-Japanese and Middle Chinese syllable-final stops are due to false back-formation. This paper demonstrates that such an account is not only inconsistent with certain facts of Japanese historical phonology but also unnecessary. Most of the so-called anomalous correspondences are in fact regular borrowings from a relatively late stage of Chinese.
ISSN:0003-0279
DOI:10.2307/603151