Japanese Linguistics

[Fervin]

Hi guys, I am new here and already in need of some help/inspiration ^^

I am a B.A. in linguistics and interested in the Japanese Language. I wanted to write a seminar paper on it. I especially like phonology and thought about writing about characteristics of the Japanese language or phonology. Anybody has a good idea?
I am not the best when it comes to concretize on one special subject...

[FlatAssembler]

I'd start by explaining what's a syllable structure and basic phonotactics. What do you think? Japanese phonology is a good example of restrictive phonotactics and syllable structure.

[Daniel]

There are a lot of topics to consider of course. If you want to get into a somewhat complicated topic you could look at prosodic properties of particles in Japanese to argue for an analysis as either postpositions or case suffixes.  It's an interesting problem without a clear single answer but you could make an argument from the perspective of phonology if possible.

[Sylar]

You say you're interested in it... well what are you interested about!? Write about that!

I tend to get fascinated on exotic things that my language lacks, so for me the cool parts about Japanese phonology include:
pitch accent
biblial fricatives!
devoicing
The ɯ̟ᵝ vowel; a close near-back vowel with lip compression - super exotic!