Delayed pitch fall in Japanese

Abstract

The Tokyo dialect of Japanese is regarded as a prototypical pitch accent language where the location of F0 fall is the only acoustic correlate of the accent. Neustupný [Onsei‐gakkai Kaihoo 121 (1966)], however, reported that F0 fall does not always synchronize with an accented mora but may be carried over to the following mora. Sugito [Shooin Joshi Daigaku Ronshuu 10 (1972)] found that native speakers perceived a pitch accent on a mora when it was followed by a falling F0 contour and also that the F0 peak value in the accented mora need not be higher than that in the following mora. Not well investigated though is the correlation between the peak location and the steepness of falling contour. The working hypothesis is that the later the F0 fall occurs, the faster F0 drops. This delayed pitch fall is characterized in terms of (1) the F0 peak location and (2) the steepness of F0 contour computed in Hz/cs. The results from 560 tokens uttered by seven speakers of the Tokyo dialect confirmed our hypothesis. [Work partially supported by Sloan grant to Berkeley Cognitive Science Program.]