Dissecting analogical leveling quantitatively: The case of the innovative potential suffix in Tôkyô Japanese

Abstract

ABSTRACT Analogical leveling in progress of a potential suffix in Tôkyô Japanese is analyzed within a quantitative paradigm. The phenomenon, whereby an innovative potential and a conservative potential alternate, is shown through a multivariate analysis to be controlled by five factors: sociological variable complex, length of the verb stem, conjugation pattern of the verb, the following inflectional form, and embeddedness of the clause containing the suffix. Most of the linguistic constraints are observed crosslinguistically in language change or variation, giving further credibility to the analysis. Although traditional frequency-based theory of analogical leveling would predict stem frequency to be a possible factor, I demonstrate that it is not in this case. As a principled explanation for this apparent lack of contribution from frequency, the Revised Frequency Hypothesis is proposed.

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