Rendaku

Rendaku (連濁, Japanese pronunciation: [ɾendakɯ], lit. 'sequential voicing') is a morphophonological phenomenon affecting compound words in Japanese, where a voiceless consonant (such as /t k s h/) is replaced with a voiced consonant (such as /d ɡ z b/) at the start of the second (or later) element of the compound. For example, the morpheme kami (紙, paper) starts with the voiceless consonant /k/ when used as an independent word or as the first element of a compound word, but this is replaced with the corresponding voiced consonant /ɡ/ when this morpheme is used as the second element of the compound word origami. In modern Japanese, rendaku is common but at times unpredictable, with certain words unaffected by it. While kanji do not indicate rendaku, it is marked in kana by adding the dakuten (voicing mark).

Effects

Consonants (in Hepburn) undergoing rendaku

Unvoiced		Voiced
k	→	g
s, sh	→	z, j
t, ch, ts	→	d, j, z
h, f	→	b

Rendaku replaces a voiceless obstruent consonant with a corresponding voiced consonant sound. This is seen most straightforwardly in the case of the voiceless alveolar plosive [t], which in the context of rendaku becomes the voiced alveolar plosive [d], retaining the same manner and place of articulation as the original consonant. However, rendaku can also cause additional changes depending on the sounds involved.

In the standard variety of Japanese, rendaku has the following effects. Note that in the context of Japanese phonology, some consonant sounds that seem distinct to English speakers, and that have distinct spellings in Hepburn romanization, are analyzed as allophones (contextual variants of a phoneme).

Consonants eligible for rendaku

Original consonant			Consonant after rendaku
Phoneme	Allophones	Romanization	Phoneme	Allophones	Romanization
/t/	[t]	t	/d/	[d]	d
	[ts]	ts	/d/ or /z/	[dz] or [z]	z
	[tɕ]	ch		[dʑ] or [ʑ]	j
/s/	[s]	s	/z/	[dz] or [z]	z
	[ɕ]	sh		[dʑ] or [ʑ]	j
/k/	[k]	k	/ɡ/	[ɡ] or [ŋ]	g
/h/	[ɸ]	f	/b/	[b]	b
	[h]	h
	[ç]

Depending on accent, the voiced velar nasal [ŋ] may be used in Japanese as an alternative to the voiced velar stop [ɡ] when the consonant occurs in the middle of a word. These two sounds are typically analyzed as allophones of a single phoneme /ɡ/. In accents that use [ŋ] like this, [k] is replaced with [ŋ] in the context of rendaku.

The voiceless affricates [ts tɕ] are commonly analyzed as allophones of /t/. The phonemic analysis of their voiced outcomes is complicated by a phonetic merger. Originally, [ts tɕ] corresponded to voiced affricate sounds [dz dʑ], whereas [s ɕ] corresponded to voiced fricative sounds [z ʑ]. However, the historical distinction between [dz dʑ] and [z ʑ] has been lost in the Tokyo-based standard (though not in all regional varieties of Japanese). The merged sounds may be pronounced either as voiced affricates or voiced fricatives, regardless of etymology (see yotsugana). As a result of this merge, the phonetic sequence [(d)zɯ] represents a neutralization of historical /du/ and /zu/, and [(d)ʑi] represents a neutralization of historical /di/ and /zi/.

In the context of rendaku, dialects with the merger may be analyzed as possessing an underlying phonemic distinction between /du di/ and /zu zi/ that becomes neutralized on the phonetic level as [dzɯ dʑi]. When morphemes that begin with the morae chi (ち/チ) and tsu (つ/ツ) undergo rendaku, the resulting morae ji and zu are generally spelled with the kana ぢ/ヂ and づ/ヅ, rather than the identically pronounced じ/ジ and ず/ズ. This is not a strict rule, however, and is relaxed in certain older compounds or names, especially those that are not easily recognized as compounds.

It is possible to characterize rendaku in terms of its effect on a morpheme's Japanese kana spelling: it adds the dakuten (voicing mark) to the first kana of the affected morpheme. The relevant graphemes are shown in the tables below (excluding yōon digraphs, which are formed by taking an i-column kana and placing a small ya, yu, or yo kana after it).

Hiragana monographs (gojūon) affected by rendaku

	Before rendaku
	a	i	u	e	o
K	か ka [ka]	き ki [ki]	く ku [kɯ]	け ke [ke]	こ ko [ko]
S	さ sa [sa]	し shi [ɕi]	す su [sɯ]	せ se [se]	そ so [so]
T	た ta [ta]	ち chi [tɕi]	つ tsu [tsɯ]	て te [te]	と to [to]
H	は ha [ha]	ひ hi [çi]	ふ fu [ɸɯ]	へ he [he]	ほ ho [ho]
	After rendaku (with dakuten)
	a	i	u	e	o
G	が ga [ɡa]	ぎ gi [ɡi]	ぐ gu [ɡɯ]	げ ge [ɡe]	ご go [ɡo]
Z	ざ za [(d)za]	じ ji [(d)ʑi]	ず zu [(d)zɯ]	ぜ ze [(d)ze]	ぞ zo [(d)zo]
D	だ da [da]	ぢ ji [(d)ʑi]	づ zu [(d)zɯ]	で de [de]	ど do [do]
B	ば ba [ba]	び bi [bi]	ぶ bu [bɯ]	べ be [be]	ぼ bo [bo]

Katakana monographs (gojūon) affected by rendaku

	Before rendaku
	a	i	u	e	o
K	カ ka [ka]	キ ki [ki]	ク ku [kɯ]	ケ ke [ke]	コ ko [ko]
S	サ sa [sa]	シ shi [ɕi]	ス su [sɯ]	セ se [se]	ソ so [so]
T	タ ta [ta]	チ chi [tɕi]	ツ tsu [tsɯ]	テ te [te]	ト to [to]
H	ハ ha [ha]	ヒ hi [çi]	フ fu [ɸɯ]	ヘ he [he]	ホ ho [ho]
	After rendaku (with dakuten)
	a	i	u	e	o
G	ガ ga [ɡa]	ギ gi [ɡi]	グ gu [ɡɯ]	ゲ ge [ɡe]	ゴ go [ɡo]
Z	ザ za [(d)za]	ジ ji [(d)ʑi]	ズ zu [(d)zɯ]	ゼ ze [(d)ze]	ゾ zo [(d)zo]
D	ダ da [da]	ヂ ji [(d)ʑi]	ヅ zu [(d)zɯ]	デ de [de]	ド do [do]
B	バ ba [ba]	ビ bi [bi]	ブ bu [bɯ]	ベ be [be]	ボ bo [bo]

The following table shows an example of rendaku for each major allophone of the eligible consonant sounds:

Rendaku examples

Change	Example
[t] t → [d] d	hi (ひ, fire) + tane (たね, seed) → hidane (ひだね, spark)
[ts] ts → [(d)z] z	ari (あり, ant) + tsuka (つか, mound) → arizuka (ありづか, anthill)
[tɕ] ch → [(d)ʑ] j	hana (はな, nose) + chi (ち, blood) → hanaji (はなぢ, nosebleed)
[s] s → [(d)z] z	kuro (くろ, black) + satō (さとう, sugar) → kurozatō (くろざと, brown sugar)
[ɕ] sh → [(d)ʑ] j	tate (たて, vertical) + shima (しま, stripe) → tatejima (たてじま, vertical stripe)
[k] k → [ɡ~ŋ] g	te (て, hand) + kami (かみ, paper) → tegami (てがみ, letter)
[ɸ] f → [b] b	kawa (かわ, river) + fune (ふね, boat) → kawabune (かわぶね, river boat)
[h] h → [b] b	se (せ, back) + hone (ほね, bone) → sebone (せぼね, backbone)
[ç] h → [b] b	hana (はな, flower) + hi (ひ, fire) → hanabi (はなび, firework)

Conditions

Rendaku occurs most frequently in compounds where the second element is a single native Japanese morpheme that does not already contain a voiced obstruent phoneme. However, even though rendaku is usual in this context, it does not invariably occur: there are numerous exceptions pronounced without rendaku. Some compounds are pronounced with rendaku by some speakers, but without it by other speakers.

Rendaku is blocked when a voiced obstruent phoneme is already present in the second element of the compound. This rule, called Lyman’s law, is highly reliable, with only a small number of exceptions.

Rendaku is blocked also when the second element is gairaigo (a recent loanword from a language other than Chinese). This rule is also highly consistent, with few exceptions.


Rendaku does not affect most Sino-Japanese elements, but this tendency is less consistent. A substantial minority do undergo rendaku as the second element of a compound. It has been speculated that Sino-Japanese elements that can undergo rendaku might have become "vulgarized", that is, adopted into the same category of vocabulary as native Japanese morphemes.

Other rules have been proposed regarding circumstances where rendaku is either blocked or favored, but often, it is only possible to identify tendencies rather than inviolable rules.

Lyman's law

Lyman's law refers to the constraint that no rendaku can occur if the second element already contains a voiced obstruent phoneme (that is, if it contains any of the consonant phonemes /d ɡ z b/, including their allophones such as [dʑ] and [ŋ]; all of these sounds are written with the dakuten and called "muddy sounds" (濁音, dakuon) in Japanese). This is considered to be one of the most fundamental of the rules governing rendaku.

yama + kado → Yamakado (surname) 山門（やまかど）, not *Yamagado やまがど ("mountain" + "gate" → place name) (* indicates a non-existent form)

hitori + tabi → hitoritabi, not *hitoridabi ("one person" + "travel" → "traveling alone")

yama + kaji → yamakaji, not *yamagaji ("mountain" + "fire" → "mountain fire")

The precise formulation of Lyman's law—in particular, the size of the phonological domain in which it applies—varies between analysts. One formulation states that rendaku is blocked by the presence of voiced obstruent consonant "within a morpheme"; this may be interpreted as a consequence of a more general constraint that applies also to the underived form of native Japanese morphemes, which do not generally contain more than one voiced obstruent phoneme. An alternative view is that Lyman's law applies whenever a voiced obstruent consonant occurs anywhere within the second element of a compound, and so might also include cases where this element is composed of more than one morpheme. Rendaku occasionally (although relatively infrequently) causes voicing of the initial consonant of a Sino-Japanese (kango) lexeme that is written with two kanji, and is in etymological terms composed of two Sino-Japanese roots; it is debatable whether such lexemes count as one morpheme or two from a synchronic perspective.

In modern Japanese, the presence of a voiced obstruent phoneme in the first element does not normally block rendaku, as demonstrated by examples such as sode (そでぐち, sleeve) + kuchi (くち, mouth) → sodeguchi (そでぐち, cuff). Nevertheless, it has been proposed that in certain circumstances, Lyman's law might be (or might once have been) sensitive to the presence of a voiced obstruent in the first element of a compound. Compound personal names ending in the element ta 'rice field' seem to usually show rendaku when the final mora of the first element contains /t k s m n/ (e.g. Katada, Fukuda, Asada, Hamada, Sanada), but never show rendaku when the final mora of the first element contains /d ɡ z b j/ (e.g. Kadota, Nagata, Mizuta, Kubota, Hayata) (and usually do not show rendaku when it contains /r w/). The pattern of voicing seen in compounds like these may in part be a residue of an older version of the law that operated in Old Japanese. Examination of Old Japanese compounds suggests that Old Japanese had a constraint against two consecutive syllables starting with a prenasalized consonant (the source of modern Japanese dakuon/voiced obstruent phonemes), but over time, this constraint came to be replaced with the modern tendency for a dakuon consonant to block rendaku only when it occurs in the second element of the compound.

Some formulations of the law treat it as applicable only in cases where the dakuon/voiced obstruent phoneme is the second consonant of the final element of the compound. In the case of Old Japanese, there is not enough evidence to conclude whether the Old Japanese version of Lyman's law applied to morphemes containing a prenasalized consonant in their third or later syllable. In modern Japanese, however, there is evidence that Lyman's law applies in general to morphemes of this form, as indicated by the lack of rendaku in examples such as tsuno (つの, horn) + tokage (とかげ, lizard) → tsunotokage (つのとかげ, horned toad) or ko (こ, child) + hitsuji (ひつじ, sheep) → kohitsuji (こひつじ, lamb). There are only a handful of exceptions, such as nawa (なわ, rope) + hashigo (はしご, ladder) → nawabashigo (なわばしご, rope ladder), where voicing occurs despite the presence of a dakuon/voiced obstruent consonant in the second element of the compound.

Although this law is named after Benjamin Smith Lyman, who independently propounded it in 1894, it is really a re-discovery. The Edo period linguists Kamo no Mabuchi (1765) and Motoori Norinaga (1767–1798) separately and independently identified the law during the 18th century.

Lexical stratum of the second element

Another important factor affecting the likelihood of rendaku is the lexical stratum or layer of the second element of the compound. Rendaku frequently affects wago (native Japanese lexemes), infrequently affects kango (Sino-Japanese vocabulary), and very rarely affects gairaigo (recent loanwords, such as borrowings from English). On the other hand, the lexical stratum of the first element of the compound is not relevant.

One possible reason for the resistance of Sino-Japanese morphemes to rendaku is the greater potential for it to cause homophony in this context. Native Japanese morphemes very rarely start with a voiced obstruent consonant, but this does not apply to Sino-Japanese; therefore, rendaku of Sino-Japanese morphemes is more likely to neutralize a contrast between distinct morphemes.

Kango

Sino-Japanese vocabulary is built from Sino-Japanese roots, which have a restricted phonological structure (one or two moras long). At least half or more of Sino-Japanese terms are "binoms" consisting of two roots, but some roots can be used on their own as words (mononoms). Each word is written with as many kanji (Chinese characters) as it has roots.

When used as the second element of a compound, most Sino-Japanese lexemes do not undergo rendaku. However, a minority (around 20% of mononoms, and 10% of binoms) do show rendaku in at least some compounds.

The following examples show rendaku of a Sino-Japanese mononom:

ひ + はち → ひばち

hi + hachi → hibachi ("fire" + "bowl" → "brazier; hibachi")

ね + そう → ねぞう

ne + sō → nezō ("sleep" + "appearance" → "sleeping posture")

The following examples show rendaku of a Sino-Japanese binom:

きゃく + ふ-とん → きゃく-ぶ-とん

kyaku + futon → kyakubuton ("guest" + "bedding" → "bedding for guests")

Here, futon is a kango binom composed of fu + ton

いろ + ちゃ-や → いろ-ぢゃ-や

ぼん + ちょう-ちん → ぼん-ぢょう-ちん

Bon + chōchin → Bonjōchin ("Bon" + "lantern" → "Bon lantern")

Here, chōchin is a Chinese borrowing, composed of chō ("portable") and chin ("lamp")

おや + かい-しゃ → おや-がい-しゃ

oya + kaisha → oyagaisha ("parent" + "company" → "parent company")

Here, kaisha is a kango binom composed of kai ("gathering") and sha ("company")

かぶしき + かいしゃ → かぶしきがいしゃ

kabushiki + kaisha → kabushikigaisha ("stock-type" + "company" → "joint-stock company")

Sino-Japanese roots that start with voiceless obstruents may have variant pronunciations starting with voiced obstruent phonemes for other reasons aside from rendaku.

One reason is the existence of different readings of Sino-Japanese roots, corresponding in general to different time periods of borrowing. Two of the most important types of reading are termed Go-on and Kan-on. Certain Kan-on readings starting with /h t s k/ correspond regularly to Go-on readings starting with /b d z ɡ/: these represent different adaptations of Early Middle Chinese voiced obstruent sounds, and so the existence of these alternative pronunciations is unrelated in origin to rendaku.

An example is the root 地 'ground, land', which has both a Kan-on pronunciation chi [tɕi] and a Go-on pronunciation ji [(d)ʑi]; for this reason, the use of the voiced pronunciation in compounds such as roji (路地, lane, alley) cannot necessarily be attributed to rendaku, since this pronunciation variant can also be found at the start of a word.

In addition, a minority of lexemes composed of two Sino-Japanese roots display a type of sequential voicing, affecting only roots in second position, that is indistinguishable in effect from rendaku, but probably has a distinct origin in terms of morphology. The relevant context is forms such as 東国 tōgoku (eastern provinces), which appears to display rendaku on its second element 国 koku (country). In this case, voicing is hypothesized to be the result of the preceding Sino-Japanese root 東 originally ending in a nasal sound, which caused the following consonant to become prenasalized and voiced. Prenasalization and voicing of a consonant after a nasal sound (/ũ, ĩ, N/) is hypothesized to have been an active phonological rule up through Early Middle Japanese; in Late Middle Japanese, /ũ, ĩ/ were denasalized and voicing after /N/ ceased to be automatic.

Gairaigo

Gairaigo vocabulary is usually not affected by rendaku when it occurs as the second element of a compound, as illustrated by the contrast between garasudana 'glass shelf', from native Japanese tana 'shelf', and garasukēsu 'glass case', from foreign kēsu 'case': the lack of rendaku in the latter word shows the expected behavior for a non-initial element belonging to foreign vocabulary. (In contrast, as shown by garasudana, the use of a gairaigo word as the first element of a compound does not prevent rendaku of a following native element.) Examples, such as the following, where rendaku affects a gairaigo element of a compound are highly exceptional:

あめ + カッパ → あま-ガッパ

ame + kappa → amagappa ("rain" + "raincoat" → "raincoat")

Here, kappa is a gairaigo, from the Portuguese word capa ("cloak; cape")

いろは + カルタ → いろは-ガルタ

iroha + karuta → irohagaruta

Here, karuta is a gairaigo, from the Portuguese word carta ("card")

みず + キセル → みず-ギセル

mizu + kiseru → mizugiseru ("water" + "pipe" → "hooka")

Here, kiseru is a gairaigo, from the Khmer word khsiə ("pipe")

Part of speech

Rendaku affects compounds involving various parts of speech, such as Noun + Verb, Adjective + Noun, Verb + Noun, Verb + Adjective; however, it is rare in compounds of the form Verb + Verb.

Noun + na-adjective/noun → noun:

おんな + すき → おんなずき

onna + suki → onnazuki ("female person" + "liking; fondness" → "fondness for women; woman lover")

おとこ + きらい → おとこぎらい

otoko + kirai → otokogirai ("male person" + "dislike; hatred" → "dislike for men; misandry")

Ending in i-adjective → i-adjective:

うす- + きたない → うすぎたない

usu- + kitanai → usugitanai ("faint-; light-" + "dirty" → "dirty")

くち + きたない → くちぎたない

kuchi + kitanai → kuchigitanai ("mouth" + "dirty" → "foulmouthed; scurrilous")

Noun + verb → verb:

め + ふく → めぶく

me + fuku → mebuku ("sprout" + "to blow" → "to bud")

Verb (ren'yōkei) + noun → noun:

いけ (from verb 生ける (いける)) + はな → いけばな

ike + hana → ikebana ("keep alive" + "flower" → "flower arrangement")

おり + かみ → おりがみ

ori + kami → origami ("fold" + "paper" → "paperfolding")

Verb (ren'yōkei) + verb → verb:

たち + とまる → たちどまる

tachi + tomaru → tachidomaru ("standing; starting; igniting" + "to stop" → "to stop")

Verb (ren'yōkei) + verb (ren'yōkei) → noun:

おき + さり → おきざり

oki + sari → okizari ("putting" + "leaving" → "deserting")

くるい + さき → くるいざき

kurui + saki → kuruizaki ("being in disarray" + "blooming" → "unseasonable blooming")

Reduplication

Rendaku is very frequent in words formed by reduplication, other than mimetic words, which are immune to rendaku.

Examples:

ひと + ひと → ひと-びと (人々) (iteration)

hito + hito → hitobito ("person" + "person" → "people")

とき + とき → とき-どき (時々) (iteration)

toki + toki → tokidoki ("time" + "time" → "sometimes")

Semantics

Rendaku tends not to occur in non-reduplicative compounds which have the semantic value of "X and Y" (so-called dvandva or copulative compounds), as exemplified by yama + kawa > yamakawa "mountains and rivers", as opposed to yama + kawa > yamagawa "mountain river".

Branching compounds

In compounds containing more than two elements (or rather, compounds where one element is itself a compound), the branching structure of the compound may affect the application of rendaku. For example, todana, a compound of the morphemes to "door" and tana "shelf", retains its initial voiceless /t/ when used as the second element of the compound fukurotodana "small cupboard". In examples like this, where the second element contains a voiced consonant as a result of rendaku, the lack of voicing at the start of the second element of the larger compound can potentially be explained as a consequence of Lyman's law.

Otsu 1980 proposed that rendaku is blocked in general in the left-branching elements of a right-branching compound, even in cases where Lyman's law does not apply. However, other linguists have questioned the validity or necessity of formulating such a constraint. The branching constraint is intended to explain the contrasting behavior of examples such as the following:

mon + [shiro + chō] > monshirochō, not *monjirochō ("family crest" + ["white" + "butterfly"] > "cabbage butterfly")

but

[o + shiro] + washi > ojirowashi (["tail" + "white"] + "eagle" > "white-tailed eagle")

This constraint does not apply to all words where the second element is composed of more than one morpheme. As discussed above, rendaku can affect Sino-Japanese "binoms" composed of two Sino-Japanese roots. Assuming the branching constraint is valid, it is possible it does not prevent rendaku in that context because Sino-Japanese binoms do not have the morphological status of compound words in the context of rendaku. In any case, there seem to be some counterexamples to the branching constraint, such as ōburoshiki 'big talk', from ō- 'big' + furoshiki, from furo ' bath' + shiki 'carpet', or machibikeshi 'fire brigade for common people', from machi 'town' + hikeshi, from hi 'fire' + keshi 'to extinguish'. One proposal accounts for such apparent counterexamples by postulating a distinction between "loose" compounds, which are hypothesized to be immune to rendaku per the branching rule when used as the right-hand element of a larger compound, and "strict" compounds, which can undergo rendaku the same way as single morphemes. However, it is not clear that there are reliable non-circular criteria for predicting whether a compound is "loose" or "strict". Other examples of rendaku affecting "multi-root" elements that are themselves composed of smaller elements include the following:

おぼろ + つき-よ → おぼろ-づき-よ

oboro + tsukiyo → oborozukiyo ("haze" + "moonlit night" → "hazy moonlit night")

Here, tsukiyo is composed of tsuki ("moon") and yo ("night")

iro + chaya → irojaya ("lust" + "teahouse" → "brothel teahouse")

Here, chaya is composed of cha ("tea") and ya ("shop"); cha by itself generally doesn't undergo rendaku, but chaya frequently does

The branching constraint analysis could be considered a violation of the Atom Condition, which states that "in lexical derivations from X, only features realized on X are accessible." An alternative view proposes that the process applies cyclically.

[nuri + hashi] + ire > nuribashiire ([lacquered chopstick] case, "case for lacquered chopsticks")

nuri + [hashi + ire] > nurihashiire (lacquered [chopstick case], "lacquered case for chopsticks")

This could be seen as the voicing between hashi and ire staying unrealized but still activating Lyman's Law.

Ito and Mester 2003 proposed a third account distinct from both Otsu 1980's branching-based constraint and Ito and Mester 1986's cyclical account. This hypothesis holds that the relationship between branching and rendaku is not direct, but is mediated by prosodic structure: the lack of rendaku in right-branching compounds such as hatsu kao awase is analyzed as a consequence of kao coming at the start of a prosodic word. Per Ito and Mester 2007, whether a compound is treated as one or as multiple prosodic words is affected by the length of the second element of the compound: if the second element is longer than four moras (or two bimoraic feet), then the compound is required to have the prosody of a phrase rather than a single word.

Further considerations

Despite a number of rules which have been formulated to help explain the distribution of the effect of rendaku, there still remain many examples of words in which rendaku manifests in ways currently unpredictable. Some instances are linked with a lexical property as noted above but others may obey laws yet to be discovered. Rendaku thus remains partially unpredictable, sometimes presenting a problem even to native speakers, particularly in Japanese names, where rendaku occurs or fails to occur often without obvious cause. In many cases, an identically written name may either have or not have rendaku, depending on the person. For example, 中田 may be read in a number of ways, including both Nakata and Nakada.

In some cases, rendaku varies depending on syntax. For instance, the suffix tōri (〜通り, "road, following"), from tōru (通る, "to go, to follow"), is pronounced as -tōri (〜とおり) following the perfective verb, as in omotta-tōri (思った通り, "as I thought"), but is pronounced as -dōri (〜どおり, with rendaku) when following a noun, as in yotei-dōri (予定通り, "as planned, according to schedule") or, semantically differently – more concretely – Muromachi-dōri (室町通, "Muromachi Street").

Avoidance of bVmV

Rendaku seems to be avoided in non-verbal elements that start with [h] or [ç] + vowel + /m/ + vowel, such as hama, hamo, hima, hime, himo, hema, which has been explained as an effect of a preference against having homorganic consonants at the start of adjacent syllables: rendaku would replace [h] or [ç] with [b], which is bilabial like [m]. Rendaku is seen before vowel + /m/ + vowel in koibumi 'love letter' from fumi 'letter': this is consistent with the hypothesis, since [ɸɯmi] contains [ɸ], which is already homorganic with [m] (and so avoiding rendaku would not make any difference). (An alternative explanation supposes that fumi, as well as other words that undergo rendaku to /b/, starts with an underlying labial consonant that is phonologically distinct from the /h/ found at the start of lexemes that do not undergo rendaku.)

A study observed this tendency as an active factor affecting the frequency with which Japanese speakers preferred rendaku vs. non-rendaku variants of nonce words.

For whatever reason, this avoidance is not seen in verb roots (including deverbal nouns), which undergo rendaku even in cases such as musibamu 'to corrupt'.

No comparable effect is seen with other consonant sounds that undergo rendaku, since they retain the same place of articulation after the change.

Voicing of preceding consonant

In some cases, voicing of preceding consonants also occurs, as in sazanami (細波, ripple), which was formerly sasa-nami. This is rare and irregular, however.

Nasal and unvoiced obstruent clusters

Native speakers usually (1.3% compared to 10% of all Sino-Japanese words) do not apply rendaku to compounds with clusters of voiced nasals and unvoiced obstruents.

Origin

The voiced obstruent consonants of modern Japanese go back to prenasalized voiced obstruents of Old Japanese. Rendaku may have originated from the fusion of consonants with preceding nasal sounds derived from reduction of the genitive postpositional particle no (の) or the dative postpositional particle ni (に): for example, according to this hypothesis, a form such as yamadori (やまどり, copper pheasant) might go back to an original yama-no-tori "mountain-GEN bird". This explanation could help account for why rendaku is not found consistently in all compound words: if some compounds were originally formed with no or ni, but others were formed with simple juxtaposition of two roots, then rendaku would be expected to have arisen only in the first category of compounds, but not in the second.

Whatever its origin, by the Old Japanese period rendaku had already become grammatically distinct from constructions with no or ni, as shown by the occurrence of forms such as nadori "your bird", where a phrase with no would be ungrammatical, since the genitive of the pronoun na "you" was always formed with the particle ga.

Rendaku in Tohoku dialects

In the Kahoku dialect of Tōhoku, the phonemes /t k ts tɕ/ have voiced allophones [d ɡ dz dʑ] when they come between voiced vowels, and the phonemes /b d ɡ z dʑ/ have prenasalized or nasal allophones [ᵐb ⁿd ᵑɡ~ŋ ⁿdz ⁿdʑ] when they come between vowels: for example, /mato/ 'target' is pronounced [mɑdo] (with a second consonant that is voiced but not prenasalized) whereas /mado/ 'window' is pronounced [mɑ̃ⁿdo] (with both voicing and prenasalization of the second consonant). Thus, rendaku in this dialect, when it occurs, typically involves phonetic prenasalization of the second element of the compound, as is speculated to have been the case in prehistoric Japanese: e.g. /hama/ 'beach" + /kuri/ 'chestnut' → /hamaɡuri/ [hɑmɑ̃ᵑɡɯɾɨ] 'clam'. However, the use of prenasalization at the start of the second element of a compound word is not uniform, and depending on the speakers and the words pronounced, significant variations were observed. There was a relationship between the rate of prenasalization and the speakers’ age: older individuals display it at a higher rate than younger individuals. On the other hand, differences in the speakers’ gender and socioeconomic status did not affect the rate of prenasalization. It is speculated that dialect mixing with standard Japanese may have increased the use of pronunciations without prenasalization. In the case of /b/ [ᵐb], loss of prenasalization may also have additionally been facilitated by the fact that the resulting sound [b] did not merge with any preexisting phoneme, since /p/ does not occur intervocalically in non-mimetic vocabulary (in contrast, in forms like [te̝ɡɑmɨ], the absence of prenasalization makes it possible to interpret the consonant [ɡ] as merely the voiced intervocalic allophone of /k/, which would result in the phonemic transcription /tekami/, with the same consonant phoneme as the independent word /kami/).

A Tōhoku dialect spoken in Iwate Prefecture has been reported to have a phonotactic constraint prohibiting prenasalized obstruents from occurring in two successive syllables; this rule produces regular denasalization in [kɑ̃ᵐbɑbɨ] 'ceremonial fire' as opposed to [hɑnɑ̃ᵐbi] 'fireworks'.

See also

• Consonant mutation
• Lenition
• Sandhi

References

• Dexter, Kristen (14 August 2018). "Rendaku: Why Hito-Bito isn't Hito-Hito". Tofugu.
• Endō, Kunimoto (1981). "Hirendaku no Hōzoku no Shōchō to Sono Imi: Dakushion to Bion to no Kankei kara". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) (Japanese citation: 遠藤邦基(1981)「非連濁の法則の消長とその意味―濁子音と鼻音との関係から―」(『国語国文』50-3))
• Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010). A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge University Press.
• Hirayama, Manami (2005). "Place asymmetry and markedness of labials in Japanese". Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics. 24: 125–168.
• Irwin, Mark (April 2005). "Rendaku-based Lexical Hierarchies in Japanese: The Behaviour of Sino-Japanese Mononoms in Hybrid Noun Compounds". Journal of East Asian Linguistics. 14 (2): 121–153. doi:10.1007/s10831-004-6306-9. ISSN 0925-8558. S2CID 55842710.
• Itō, Shingo (1928). Kinsei Kokugoshi. Ōsaka: Tachikawa Bunmeidō.
• Ito, Junko; Mester, Ralf-Armin (1986). "The Phonology of Voicing in Japanese: Theoretical Consequences for Morphological Accessibility" (PDF). Linguistic Inquiry. 17. Retrieved April 21, 2024.
• Ito, Junko; Mester, Armin (2003). Japanese Morphophonemics: Markedness and Word Structure. MIT Press.
• Ito, Junko; Mester, Armin (2007). "Prosodic Adjunction in Japanese Compounds" (PDF). MIT working papers in linguistics. 55: 97–111.
• Kawahara, Shigeto (2015), "Can we use rendaku for phonological argumentation?", Linguistics Vanguard, 1 (1): 3–14, doi:10.1515/lingvan-2015-0001
• Kawahara, Shigeto (2018), "Phonology and orthography: The orthographic characterization of rendaku and Lyman's Law.", Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 3 (1): 1–24, doi:10.5334/gjgl.368
• Kawahara, Shigeto; Ono, Hajime; Sudo, Kiyoshi (2006), "Consonant Cooccurrence Restrictions in Yamato Japanese", Japanese/Korean Linguistics, 14: 27–38
• Kubozono, Haruo (2005). "Rendaku: Its Domain and Linguistic Conditions" (PDF). In Jeroen van de Weijer; Kensuke Nanjo; Tetsuo Nishihara (eds.). Voicing in Japanese. Studies in Generative Grammar. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 5–24. doi:10.1515/9783110197686.1.5. ISBN 978-3-11-018600-0. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2004-09-12.
• Kumagai, Gakuji (2020), Testing the OCP-labial effect on Japanese rendaku
• Labrune, Laurence (2012), The Phonology of Japanese, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-954583-4
• Low, James (2009). Issues in Rendaku: Solving the Nasal Paradox and Reevaluating Current Theories of Sequential Voicing in Japanese (PDF) (Senior thesis in linguistics thesis). Pomona College. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-03.
• Martin, Samuel E. (1987). The Japanese Language Through Time. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03729-5.
• Miyashita, Mizuki; Irwin, Mark; Wilson, Ian; Vance, Timothy J. (2016-06-13). "Rendaku in Tōhoku Japanese: The Kahoku-chō Survey". In Vance, Timothy J.; Irwin, Mark (eds.). Sequential Voicing in Japanese. Studies in Language Companion Series. Vol. 176. doi:10.1075/slcs.176. ISBN 978-90-272-5941-7. ISSN 0165-7763.
• Rice, Keren (2002). "Sequential voicing, postnasal voicing, and Lyman's Law revisited*" (PDF). University of Toronto. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2015-03-19.
• Otsu, Yukio (1980). "Some aspects of rendaku in Japanese and related problems". MIT Working Papers in Linguistics: Theoretical Issues in Japanese Linguistics 2: 207–227.
• Shibatani, Masayoshi (1990). The Languages of Japan. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 173–175. ISBN 0-521-36918-5.
• Suzuki, Yutaka (2004). "'Rendaku' no Koshō ga Kakuritsu suru made: Rendaku Kenkyūshi". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Japanese citation: 鈴木豊(2004)「「連濁」の呼称が確立するまで―連濁研究前史―」(『国文学研究』142)
• Uwano, Zendō (2015), "Bidakuon 2-dai", NINJAL Colloquium series, Tokyo
• Vance, Timothy J. (1982), "On the Origin of Voicing Alteration in Japanese Consonants", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 102 (2): 333–341
• Vance, Timothy J. (1987). An Introduction to Japanese Phonology. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-88706-361-6.
• Vance, Timothy J. (2022). Irregular Phonological Marking of Japanese Compounds. De Gruyter.
• Weijer, Jeroen van de (2005). Kensuke Nanjo; Tetsuo Nishihara (eds.). Voicing in Japanese. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-018600-0.
• Yamaguchi, Yoshinori (1988). "Kodaigo no Fukugō ni Kansuru: Kōsatsu, Rendaku o Megutte". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) (Japanese citation: 山口佳紀(1988)「古代語の複合語に関する一考察―連濁をめぐって―」(『日本語学』7-5))

Further reading

• Suzuki Yutaka. "Exceptions to Lyman's Law" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-08-13.
• Vance, Timothy J.; Irwin, Mark, eds. (2016). Sequential Voicing in Japanese: Papers from the NINJAL Rendaku Project. Studies in Language Companion Series. Vol. 176. John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/slcs.176. ISBN 978-90-272-5941-7. S2CID 64058981.

External links

• The Japanese Lexicon: A Rendaku Encyclopedia Archived 2016-08-25 at the Wayback Machine – National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics