A prototypical pitch pattern of unaccented Japanese words

Abstract

Unaccented words are described as having a rising pitch pattern in Tokyo Japanese. The production and perception of F0 patterns in three-mora unaccented words that varied in segmental type of the word-medial mora were investigated. In production (N=864), F0 rose across words having a short vowel in the initial syllable (V-type), and F0 was flat across words having a long vowel or nasal coda in the initial syllable (V:/VN-type), p<.01. In perception (N=384), 70% of words with the V-type first syllable were correctly discriminated from accented words, whereas 56% of words with the V:/VN-type first syllable were correctly discriminated. Pairwise comparisons between word types revealed that the accentual pattern of CVC:V words was discriminated significantly better (by 24%) than that of CVNCV words, p<.01. These results indicated that unaccented words with rising, as opposed to flat F0, were more accurately discriminated from accented words. This might be due to a non-prototypical nature of flat F0 patterns in three-mora unaccented words. In other words, the mental representation of unaccented words may be characterized by a rising pitch pattern.