Truncation of Simplex Loanwords in Japanese

A Syllable Structure-Based Account

Abstract

Simplex loanword truncation is one of the highly productive word formation processes in Japanese. This paper aims to discuss how the length of the output forms of Japanese simplex truncation can be predicted. Although several mechanisms have been proposed in the literature, issues have been identified with each of them. This paper presents a syllable-based account: words will be shortened by deleting either the last two syllables if they have a heavy syllable as their penultimate syllable or the last three syllables if the penultimate syllable is light. This approach can solve the problems arising from the mechanisms proposed in previous studies theoretically. A dictionary-based survey was conducted, the results of which demonstrated that the proposed mechanism can account for approximately the same number of words covered by previous analyses.