This book originated from two international conferences that we organized in
Tokyo in 2013—the 2nd International Conference on Phonetics and Phonology
(2nd ICPP) held in January and the 3rd ICPP in December. These conferences
were hosted by ‘Phonological characteristics of the Japanese lexicon’, a research
project led by the first editor at the National Institute for Japanese Language and
Linguistics (NINJAL) during 2010–2016. Since this project was focused on word
accent and geminate consonants, the two conferences featured accent and tone
as the main topic of their special sessions: tonal neutralization in the 2nd ICPP
and tonal change in the 3rd ICPP. All chapters included in this volume are based
on the oral talks presented by the speakers at these two conferences and/or at
their satellite events.
Like other books of the same kind, this volume could not have been published
without the help of many people and organizations. First of all, we would like to
thank NINJAL for its generous financial support for the above-mentioned conferences as well as for the editorial work that followed them. We would also like to
thank the external reviewers of individual chapters who read each manuscript
carefully and provided us with invaluable comments, more than once in many
cases. Our special thanks also go to the post-docs who devoted their time and
energy over the years to the above-mentioned NINJAL project: Manami Hirayama,
Yasunori Takahashi, Izumi Takiguchi, and Mayuki Matsui. Thanks to their great
help, the six-year project restarted in April 2016 as a new project entitled ‘Crosslinguistic studies of Japanese prosody and grammar’ (2016–2022).
Fourthly, we cannot forget the help of Donna Erickson and John Haig who
checked the English of individual chapters, more than once in most cases. Sayaka
Goto, Gakuji Kumagai, and Natsuya Yoshida also deserve special mention here
for their service as editorial assistants. Without these people’s help, it would have
been very difficult to publish this volume as it is now.
And last, but not least, we would like to thank the series editor, Aditi Lahiri,
for reviewing all chapters and giving us appropriate advice at every important
phase of our editorial work.