Repair Strategies for failed feature specification in Japanese: Evidence from loanwords, a reversing word game, and blending

Abstract

This paper demonstrates repair strategies when place feature of the special moras in Japanese (the second half of a long vowel, moraic nasals, and the first half of a double consonant) fail to be specified in a usual manner. I posit three repair processes based on the observations of marked environments (loanwords, a word game called Sakasa Kotoba, blending): (i) over-application of regular structures in core lexicon, (ii) irregular structures that are produced through The Emergence of the Unmarked (TETU), and (iii) game-specific structures. I illustrate that even in marked environments, repair processes make outcome structures as unmarked as possible with these strategies. Based on the observations in the marked environments (mainly from Sakasa Kotoba), I further discuss the process of morification and underlying representations of special moras.