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As I'm encountering more words with rendaku, I thought I started to understand it, but I came across an example that does not make sense to me.
Why is 気 voiced き in 元気 and 本気, but is voiced ぎ in 一本気 ? In other words, why is there no rendaku in 本気 ?
From other questions, I see that there is some unpredictability about rendaku… but those words are really close to one another.
Rendaku occurs when two independent words come together to form a compound. I think 一本気 is a compound, while 本気 and 元気 are not. (Just because they are analyzable as 本+気 and 元+気 doesn't mean they are compounds. 元 and 本 are not independent words, unless you mean "a book" by 本.) Also, Sino-Japanese words don't normally participate in rendaku. In that sense, 一本気 is exceptional.
