Prosodic units

AbstractThis chapter is devoted to the prosodic units of Japanese, the mora, the syllable, the foot, the prosodic word, and the prosodic hierarchy. It reviews the evidence demonstrating the central role played by the mora in Japanese phonology. It then proceeds to a re-examination of the status of the syllable, which has been argued in a number of recent works to be an indispensable prosodic unit, alongside the mora and the foot, although it has been absent from the work of most native Japanese phonologists who have always been content with the mora. Taking as a basis the author’s extensive research on the subject, this chapter argues that the syllable is not a relevant unit in the phonology of Japanese, and it shows how all the phenomena which have been inputed to the action of the syllable can be accounted for with exclusive reference to the mora and the foot.