Prosody of Japanese university hypocoristics

In this paper I will look at the prosodic morphology of hypocoristic (nickname) formation in Japanese, using a corpus of personal and place names, specifically those of Japanese universities. Given the mutability of surface phonology for personal names, as opposed to place names, I will argue for a distinction between two classes of proper nouns. Further, I will propose that despite the fact that both personal names and place names are composed of morphemes, Japanese personal names are recognized for their phonological component, and place names for their semantics.