Acoustic correlates of Japanese pitch accent

Abstract

Acoustic correlates of Japanese pitch accent were investigated using bimoraic/disyllabic pairs of words that are identical except for their accent patterns. For example, /hana/ ‘‘flower’’ and /hana/ ‘‘nose’’ have the same phonological shape and pitch levels (low-high) yet they differ in that ‘‘flower’’ is accented but ‘‘nose’’ is unaccented. The most notable acoustic difference between the two accent patterns is realized by the F0 of the following word when there is one. There have been debates about whether the two accent patterns are acoustically different when the following word is excluded. It has been proposed that the F0 maximum is higher, and/or the F0 movement is larger for the accented words. While previous studies used only a few pairs of words, this study tests all 20 pairs of words found by searching a computerized dictionary [Amano and Kondo (1999)] that had a relatively high word familiarity. The F0 maximum and movement were measured in the 20 pairs of words as produced by native speakers of Tokyo Japanese (males and females) in isolation and two frame sentences. Implications of their results for the nature of accent in Japanese and the perception of accent will be discussed.