Varieties of pitch accent systems in Japanese

Abstract

While a number of studies have reported on the prosodic system of Japanese, a vast majority of work that is widely available focuses on Tokyo Japanese. In terms of prosodic organization, however, this dialect represents only one type of pitch accent system of the language, and is different from the pitch accent systems of other dialects in many crucial ways. Looking at various types of pitch accent systems of the language from cross-linguistic and typological points of view, this paper proposes multiple prosodic criteria or parameters to characterize and typologize pitch accent systems. Special attention is paid to the prosodic system of Koshikijima Japanese, an endangered dialect that has not been studied or reported in detail in the literature. The prosodic system of this dialect is strikingly different from that of Tokyo Japanese and many other dialects. In addition to comparing various Japanese pitch accent systems with each other, this paper also aims to compare those pitch accent systems with stress accent systems like that of English on the one hand, and with tone systems such as those of Chinese and Bantu languages on the other hand.