High vowels devoicing and elision in Japanese: A diachronic approach

The present study will focus on occurrence of fully voiced, devoiced and elided high vowels in Japanese. High vowels elision in Japanese is supported by clear acoustic evidences, even though it is not globally accepted by scholars in the field. Elided vowels, hence, are considered here to have their own status. Moreover, this study is conceived in order to state differences and analogies among four dialects and between five age groups. In fact, the main interest of this research is to prove that high vowel elision may be considered as an innovative phenomenon. Consequently, it is expected that a diatopically and diachronically based study may suggest the drift of Japanese language about the said phenomenon. Therefore, it may be possible to hypothesize changes on the strict syllable structure deriving from Japanese writing system, mainly composed of syllabic morae, which conditions mother tongue perception of Japanese phonology and phonotactics.