Where does loanword prosody come from?: A case study of Nakijin Ryukyuan loanword accent

The current study concerns loanword accent of Nakijin Ryukyuan 1 , hereafter NR. NR, as well as many Japonic languages or dialects, has a pitch accent system. Kubozono (2006) and Kubozono & Giriko (2011) claim that in several Japanese dialects loanword accent is determined by two factors: perceptual similarity between L1 (a borrowing language such as Tokyo Japanese) and L2 (a borrowed language such as English), and L1 phonology. NR loanword accent system at first sight appears different from those of other Japonic languages including Tokyo Japanese, which are reported in recent studies. In most cases, loanword accent in NR does not care about perceptual similarity, that is to say, NR ignores pitch fall of L2 (English or standard Japanese) in the course of determining accent type of loanwords. Nevertheless, the author claims that NR loanword accent can also be explained within the framework of Kubozono (2006) in a broad sense. In contrast to the languages reported in the above papers, pitch-rise is important in the NR accent system. By considering this condition unique to NR, it would be explainable that one of the two factors, perceptual similarity, does not work in NR loanword accent.