Psycholinguistic studies of rendaku

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of previous experimental studies on rendaku. Some major questions that have been addressed in this body of work include: (1) is rendaku grammatical or lexicalized? (2) are specific aspects of rendaku, such as the Right-Branch Condition, psychologically real in the minds of contemporary speakers of Japanese? (3) how does Lyman’s Law interact with rendaku in experimental settings? and (4) are there any aspects of rendaku that emerge in experimental settings even though they are not observed as existing patterns in the lexicon? After the review of studies addressing these issues, the paper concludes with a number of remaining questions which should be addressed in future experimental studies of rendaku.