Pitch values in prominent and nonprominent sentence enders in Japanese

Abstract

This study uses naturally occurring interview data to investigate properties of intonational prominence in Japanese sentence enders (SEs). Since Japanese intonation patterns generally observe downstep (Venditti, 2005), a sentence‐ending AP (accentual phrase) is likely to have the lowest F0 in an utterance if it does not receive prominence. Data from one interviewee’s responses, SEs in long IPs (more than 5 APs) and short IPs (one or two APs), are used for this analysis. Within the group of 28 short IPs, there were eight cases of the SE nandaroo ‘‘what is it, I wonder.’’ Measurements of highest and lowest F0 within nandaroo indicate two distinctive F0 patterns, determined by whether the SE is prominent or nonprominent. (Prominence appears to be placed on an SE when its content is focused.) In prominent SEs, the intonation contour contains peaks that exceed three standard deviations of the speakers F0 average. However, prominent and nonprominent utterances are similar in their F0 minima. As a result, SEs with prominence typically show wider pitch range than those without prominence. Similar results are found for other SEs contained in both long and short IPs.