Abstract
This paper considers how general linguistics can shed new light on the structure of Japanese, on the one hand, and how empirical and theoretical studies of Japanese dialects can contribute to the development of general linguistics, on the other. It tackles this question by analyzing several phonological phenomena in Japanese that are related to word accent in one way or another. This includes the accent of standard Tokyo Japanese and various processes that conspire to avoid creating superheavy syllables. Various seemingly unrelated phenomena can be generalized by introducing the notion of syllable weight into Japanese phonology; moreover, analyzing Japanese phenomena helps us widen our perspectives about the overall diversity of languages. Along these lines, the second half of this paper discusses accentual analyses of various Japanese dialects. These considerations demonstrate the extent to which studies on Japanese dialects and general linguistics can be related to each other.*
