Based on the comparison with Old Japanese (OJ), in Izumo-Nita Japanese, which is spoken around the southern part of the Izumo area in Shimane prefecture, three major sound changes are reconstructed: (1) the centralization of high vowels *u, *i > ɨ, (2) the lowering of high vowels *u > o, *i > e, and (3) r-deletion before high vowels. In most cases, forms that appear in OJ are reconstructed as proto forms, from which the forms of Nita could have been derived through the three changes above. From the viewpoint of the sound correspondences between Nita and OJ, however, three forms are considered exceptions: kusoo “medicine,” sɨrosɨ “mark,” soso “cuff.” Referring to previous studies, the mid-high vowels “o” in these forms are thought to be the remnants of *o in proto-Japanese, and they suggest that the mid-vowel raising *o > u, which Hattori (1978–79 [2018]) assumed occurred in OJ, would not have occurred in Nita. In other mainland Japanese dialects, there are what appear to be remnants of *o and *e from proto-Japanese that were lost in the central dialects. Re-examining them from a comparative linguistic perspective is one of the future tasks in this field.

Japanese tough constructions are of four types and quite different in nature from English ones although one of the types superficially corresponds to English ones. This study investigates what kind of tough sentences Japanese learners of English at a relatively early stage of acquisition produce and how L2 input and L1 influence the production. Data from the JEFILL corpus and input data from English textbooks at public junior high and high schools in Japan were analyzed. The results revealed that Japanese junior high and high school students produced a certain number of tough constructions using 11 predicates and with errors. The predicates that the learners frequently used in tough sentences were congruent with the input data. In this respect, the quality of the input seemingly influences Japanese learners’ acquisition of English tough constructions. However, the input frequency appeared to be insufficient for explaining the full range of learners’ data. The input cannot explain learners’ errors either. The various linguistic properties observed in learners’ data, including error sentences, are rather consistent with L1. Thus, it may be the case that, aside from input influence, there is both positive and negative transfer from L1. A follow-up experiment with an acceptability judgment task was also conducted to test whether Japanese learners wrongly allow a resumptive pronoun in tough constructions as the learners’ production data suggests. The results show that the Japanese learners (high-school students) allow it just as in their L1. These findings suggest that Japanese learners’ linguistic knowledge of English tough constructions may differ from that of English native speakers, at least at an early stage of acquisition.

This paper discusses an untypical type of Fanqie in the Tangut rhyme book, “Wenhai,” in which the third character functions as a tonal specifier. We reveal the existence of “pseudo-level tone” characters. Amongst the Tangut characters in the first volume (level tone volume) of Wenhai, those with the tonal specifier, “rising,” are the de facto rising tone characters and should have been placed in the second volume (rising tone volume) whose theoretical inconsistency results from the inter-tonal mergers of the “rhyme groups.” These mergers have brought several “vacant rhyme groups” to the Tangut phonology of the Tangut Empire period, for example, the rising tone of R13, R32, R39, R41, R50, R83, R88, and R102. Tangut scholars have devoted their intelligence to designing an “ideal” system rather than reporting a strict and modern description. Intentionally and sensibly, they avoided the quantitative unbalance between a minimal pair of level and rising tone.

　　However, not all possible “pseudo-level tone” characters confess their real tonal category. The suspicion that a specific character belongs to the “pseudo-level” is not always self-evident. If we faithfully accept the axiom of traditional Sinitic phonology that the second character in Fanqie always represents the tone, a large number of possible “pseudo-level tone” characters would become subjects of consideration.

　　This paper attributes this problem to the clash of earlier and later methodologies. It is probable that Wenhai’s Fanqie contains vestiges of the early theory on the phonological frame. We can derive a new hypothesis from the proposition that the theory of Tangut phonology has a chronological plurality. Specifically, the arrangement of Fanqie characters is probably earlier than the establishment and adoption of the Tangut rhymes’ classification system.

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the word/phrase pitch pattern in Khitan, an extinct language related to the Mongolic languages that was spoken in Manchuria and northern China during the Liao dynasty (907–1125). We do this by using transcriptional materials of Khitan and Liao Chinese, a local variety of Chinese spoken in that region at that time. First, as preliminary work, we critically review the special notation for tones in Khitan Small Script transcriptions of Chinese words, and reanalyze it from a quantitative perspective, thereby revealing a significant aspect regarding the tonal system of Liao Chinese. Building on this finding, we quantitatively analyze the Chinese characters used for transcribing Khitan words according to their position within the word, showing a clear preference for specific tonal categories based on position. Furthermore, taking into consideration the temporal variability within Liao Chinese and the pitch patterns in modern Mongolic languages, we interpret the tonal preference in Chinese transcriptions of Khitan words to mean that Khitan was a phrase language with an L tone at the left edge and an H tone at the right edge of every word or phrase.