The preservation of proto-Japanese tone class 2.5 in the Izumo region explained

What is it about?

There is a controversy in Japanese linguistics concerning the correct reconstruction of the tone system that formed the ancestor of all the present-day tone system in Japan. The majority view is that the tone systems represented in the center of Japan (called Kyoto type tone systems, because the old capital of Kyoto forms the center of this area) are close to the original system, and that the tone systems that surround it (called Tokyo type tone systems, because the present-day capital of Tokyo is included in this area) are the result of series of identical innovations that happened independently in each region. Part of the reason why the tone system of central Japan is seen as more archaic is because it includes an extra tone class (called class 2.5) that is lacking in almost all Tokyo type tone systems. This class has, however, been preserved in the Tokyo type tone systems on Noto Island, before the coast of central Japan, and partly in the Tokyo type tone system of the Izumo region in western Japan. How this happened, and what tonal shape the class must have had in the ancestral system of Izumo has remained unclear. The article explains, as a first, the exact process through which this class came to be preserved in Izumo, and shows that the reconstructed realization in the ancestral tone system agrees exactly with its realization in the dialects on Noto Island. This argues strongly for the antiquity of the reconstruction, and the antiquity of the Tokyo type tone systems.

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