%0 Journal Article
%A Heffernan, Kevin
%A Hiratuka, Yusuke
%T Morphological relative frequency impedes the use of stylistic
variants: Evidence from a corpus of vernacular Japanese
%D 2017
%J Asia-Pacific Language Variation
%V 3
%N 2
%P 200-231
%@ 2215-1354
%R https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.16009.hef
%K frequency
%K Japanese
%K style
%K verbal negative
%K morphology
%I John Benjamins
%X The sociolinguistic enterprise has demonstrated that speakers manipulate
linguistic variants as they construct their speech style. Contrary to this
expectation, this study introduces specific cases in which stylistic variation
is highly constrained. We examine the verbal negative suffix in Kansai
vernacular Japanese. We first demonstrate that this variable indexes speech
style. We then show that in a few specific contexts, such as following the verb
stem shir- ‘know’, speakers overwhelmingly use a single
variant, in this case, shira-n ‘not know’. We point out that
the unusual forms such as shira-n all have a high relative
frequency compared to the other forms in their paradigms. Complex forms such as
the English word insane, which occur more frequently than their
parts (in+sane), are difficult to decompose. We claim that this
phenomenon also impedes stylistic variation as forms such as
shira-n are not readily decomposed into verb stem +
negative suffix.
%U https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/aplv.16009.hef