Abstract
This paper is a critical review of Elisabeth M. de Boer's The Historical Development of Japanese Tone (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010). Traditionally, Kindaichi Haruhiko's reconstruction of the accentual system of Middle Kyoto Japanese has been widely accepted. About thirty years ago, however, an alternative theory was proposed by Samuel Robert Ramsey, according to which the tone values that Kindaichi had reconstructed as 'high' and 'low' are exactly reversed. De Boer, in her book, re-evaluates and builds on Ramsey's theory, while (almost) all other scholars have ignored it. In this paper, I introduce and review her book critically, and discuss some issues in the historical study of Japanese accent.
