Accentual change in the lexical form of Japanese i-adjectives : Comparison over time with attention to rentaikei and shuushikei

Abstract: This study investigates the seemingly increasing spread of accentedness within Japanese i-adjectives in lexical final form, shuushikei, and adnominal form, rentaikei, by conducting an online survey containing Likert scale questions. Once the data had been collected, the informants were separated into age groups and their results compared between each other. In addition, the current results were compared to those of an earlier study conducted in 1993 (Taniguchi 1995). Although the total number of participants was rather low, the results suggest that the accented pattern might indeed be spreading. Moreover, the results tell us that the perceptual acceptance for accentedness is vastly higher in shuushikei than in rentaikei, even in the case of unaccented adjectives.