Japanese Accent Research Articles

東日本方言における中舌母音の起源に関する一つの仮説 : 琉球方言の音変化に照らして( 東日本の音声)

東日本方言における中舌母音の起源に関する一つの仮説 : 琉球方言の音変化に照らして( 東日本の音声)

日本語方言における談話標識の出現傾向 : 東京方言,大阪方言,仙台方言の比較

日本語方言における談話標識の出現傾向 : 東京方言,大阪方言,仙台方言の比較

山口幸洋著, 『日本語東京アクセントの成立』, 2003年9月20日発行, 港の人刊, A5判, 485ページ, 本体価格12,000円

山口幸洋著, 『日本語東京アクセントの成立』, 2003年9月20日発行, 港の人刊, A5判, 485ページ, 本体価格12,000円

現代日本語方言音声の音響分析 (&lt小特集&gt声質:音声言語の多様性に迫る)

現代日本語方言音声の音響分析 (&lt小特集&gt声質:音声言語の多様性に迫る)

Contour Tone Avoidance in Pitch Accent Systems

This paper proposes a new typology of ‘mora-counting’ pitch accent systems by considering how contour tones are avoided(or not avoided) in Japanese. Japanese dialects greatly differ from one another in the roles of the syllable and the mora, ranging from an entirely syllable-counting system as found in Kagoshima Japanese, to an entirely mora-counting system as found in Nagasaki Japanese. Most other dialects are largely mora-based, but show different degrees of dependence on the syllable. The most crucial difference can be found in the ways they avoid or tolerate the two types of contour tones, rising and falling. The rising contour tone involves a lexical accent —or H tone equivalent to it— on the non-head mora of heavy syllables, e.g. puU.ru ‘swimming pool’. This structure is disfavored by most Japanese dialects, which falls into two sub-groups depending on whether the marked structure is remedied by accent (H tone) shift, e.g. puU.ru → PUu.ru, or by accent spreading, e.g. puU.ru → PUU.ru. On the other hand, the falling contour tone is more prevalent, avoided only in some pitch accent systems. When it is avoided, this marked structure is remedied by accent(H tone) spreading where the prominence placed on the head mora, i.e. first mora, of heavy syllables spreads to the entire syllables. The final part of the paper expands the discussion on contour tone avoidance to the loanword accent of Kyungsang Korean. Building on the moraic analysis proposed by Kubozono(forthcoming), it will be argued that the so-called syllable weight effects found in Korean loanwords from English can be reinterpreted as a case where rising contour tones are avoided in word-initial position.

Perception of Japanese Pitch Accent without F0

Phonological contrasts are typically encoded with multiple acoustic correlates to ensure efficient communication. Studies have shown that such phonetic redundancy is found not only in segmental contrasts, but also in suprasegmental contrasts such as tone. In Japanese, fundamental frequency (F0) is the primary cue for pitch accent. However, little is known about its secondary cues. In the present study, a perception experiment was conducted to examine whether any secondary cues exist for Japanese accent. First, minimal pairs of final-accented and unaccented words were identified using a database, resulting in 14 pairs of words. These words were then produced by a native Tokyo Japanese speaker, and presented to participants in both unedited and edited forms. Edited speech stimuli were created by replacing F0 in the natural speech stimuli with white noise. While word identification by Tokyo Japanese speakers had higher accuracy for natural speech than for edited speech, the accuracy exceeded the chance level for edited speech, suggesting the existence of secondary cues for Japanese accent. Acoustic analysis of the stimuli revealed that relative mean amplitude and relative maximum amplitude were greater for final-accented words than for unaccented words.

An analysis of the changes in Japanese accents with a vocabulary in JPT N5

An analysis of the changes in Japanese accents with a vocabulary in JPT N5

An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis the One-pattern Accent in Sendai Japanese

The objective of this study is to examine the accent and metrical structure of Sendai Japanese in the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2002). Sendai Japanese is often called ‘accentless’ dialect, because there is no distinctive accent pattern in this dialect. But this does not mean there is no accent (pitch fall) in the dialect. When a lexical word is uttered in isolation, an accent appears in the dialect. This is because of the markedness constraint HaveAccent, which requires that every prosodic word has at least an accent. Sendai Japanese accent has fixed location in prosodic words.: it appears on the penultimate mora in more than 1-mora words. To account for this penultimate accent, I adopt two well-known constraints NonFinality(μ) and Aligh-R, and proposes the ranking NonFinality(μ) ≫ Aligh-R. Aligh-R demands that any accent falls as far to the right as possible. Nevertheless, because NonFinality(μ) dominates Aligh-R in the dialect, the final accent is not allowed in more than 1-mora words. Exceptionally an accent appears on the antepenultimate mora, when a coda obstruent is located on the penultimate mora in the dialect. To account for this phenomenon, I suggest a markedness constraint *μ /Obstruent, which bans accented moraic obstruents. *μ/Obstruent is more highly ranked than Aligh-R in the dialect, therefore when a coda obstruent is located on the penultimate mora, the accent does not appear on the penultimate mora, but on the antepenultimate mora.

An Analysis of Individual Factors in Acquiring Japanese Accent by Korean Learners of Japanese

An Analysis of Individual Factors in Acquiring Japanese Accent by Korean Learners of Japanese

Bi-dialectal homophone effects in Kansai Japanese lexical decision tasks

Many Japanese varieties, including Tokyo Japanese, have lexical pitch accent patterns that can result in homophones that vary across dialects, such as ame HL 'rain (Tokyo)' and ame LH 'candy (Tokyo), rain (Kansai)'. Experimental research on lexical pitch accent in Japanese has been limited, however, to Tokyo Japanese and accentless varieties (Utsugi, Koizumi & Mazuka, 2011). This study explores homophone effects of minimal accent pairs for speakers of Kansai Japanese, a dialect that, unlike Tokyo Japanese, has base tone melodies, HL or LHL (Haraguchi, 1977), in addition to lexical pitch accent. Unlike previous studies on processing effects of Japanese homophones (Cutler & Otake, 1999; Minematsu & Hirose, 1995) that focus on visual recognition in Tokyo Japanese (Hino, Kusunose, Lupker & Jared, 2013; Sekiguchi, 2006), the current experiment measures reaction times to auditory stimuli in a lexical decision task comparing Tokyo Japanese with Kansai Japanese, whose speakers are typically bi-dialectal speakers ...

Pitch accent and vocal effort in Japanese

It is implicitly assumed that each mora is pronounced with similar vocal effort in Japanese. Our intuition, however, is that the first or second mora is pronounced with the greatest vocal effort. This paper aims to verify this observation by analyzing vocal effort parameters CPP and H1-A3. We prepared two sets of real words and two sets of nonce words, each set consisting of 3 two mora words, 4 three mora words and 5 four mora words, varying the position and existence of pitch accent. Twelve subjects aged 21-39 participated in the recording. They read randomized test words 6 times. The result of the H1-A3 measurement shows that the first mora is significantly pronounced with the greatest vocal effort irrespective of the place and existence of pitch accent. The results of the CPP measurement show that the initial accented mora is pronounced with the greatest vocal effort, and that the second mora is pronounced with greater vocal effort than the first one if the first mora is not accented. The non-initial moras of three or four mora words are pronounced with similar vocal effort if the third or fourth mora is accented or a test word is unaccented.

Language contact and accent changes in Japanese

This talk discusses how word accent patterns of regional Japanese dialects have changed over the years as they were heavily exposed to standard Tokyo Japanese. A particular attention is paid to the accent changes that have taken place in Kagoshima Japanese, a southern dialect whose accent system is strikingly different from that the standard variety. Original fieldwork studies show that this regional dialect has been heavily influenced by the standard variety with respect to the presence or absence of a pitch fall, while the position of the fall is still determined by its traditional system: e.g., /doo.na.TU/ → /doo.NA.tu/ “donut” (Tokyo form: /DOo.na.tu/). Interestingly, the same mechanism is at work when (Tokyo) Japanese borrow words from English as loanwords: the recipient language copies the presence or absence of a pitch fall from the host language but it follows its own accent rule with respect to the position of the fall, e.g. /ba’.na.na/ “banana,” /wa.shi’n.ton/ “Washington.” These observations indicate that native Japanese speakers are highly sensitive to the presence or absence of a pitch fall when listening to a foreign language and a different variety of their native language, but are quite insensitive to the position of the pitch change.

일본어의 두 방언에 나타나는 모음축약의 양상 - 중모음의 분포 및 교체에 관하여 -

This paper examines the vowel coalescence patterns of two Japanese dialects ― Shuri Japanese in Okinawa and Oita Japanese in Kyushu island ― within the framework of Optimality Theory. These dialects show the peculiar coalescence patterns which are not typologically reported. As a type of coalescence of /ai/ and /au/, two vowels merge to mid long vowel [e:] and [o:], which are very common type of coalescence. /ei/ and /ou/, however, coalesces not to mid long vowel but to high long vowel (i.e., [i:] and [u:] respectively). This pattern has not been reported in academia so far. I will account for this perculier height coalescence with a phonetically based constraint prohibiting mid long vowel, and faithfulness constraints of vowel height which involve a perceptual distance of violation and have intrinsic hierarchy.

The accentuation of Japanese loanwords as pseudo-compounding structures

This paper examines the accentuation pattern of loanword of Japanese. Generally, nativized loanwords neglect its morphological structure from source language. Some types of Japanese loanwords, however, show their accentuation patterns of root+suffix structure although they have already constituted simplex words.BR To solve this problem, I adapt the conception of pseudo-compounding (Sato 2002, Giriko 2010). After investigating the word accents from NTT database series Nihongo-no Goitokusei (Lexical properties of Japanese), the author classified the accentual feature of pseudo-morphemic suffixes ―/-ikku/(-ic), /-izumu/(-ism), /resu/(-less), /-mento/ (-ment). /-aa/ (-er, -or), /-shon/(-tion, -sion) and /-ingu/ (-ing)― as follows.BR pseudo-morphemic feature on accentuationBR [initial accenting] : /-ikku/(-ic), /-izumu/(-ism)BR [recessive] : /resu/(-less), /-mento/ (-ment). /-aa/ (-er, -or)BR [recessive, dominant pre-accenting] : /-shon/ (-tion, -sion)BR [recessive, deaccenting] : /-ingu/ (-ing)BR These classification will shed light on hidden generalization of Japanese accent patterns.

Tonal Patterns and Extrametricality of Japanese 2-Pattern Accent Systems

This paper aims at providing a formal analysis of the tonal patterns of four Japanese dialects with n-pattern accent systems. Most of the dialects with n-pattern systems are spoken in the Southwestern part of Kyushu. These dialects share many characteristics but still show interesting differences in their tonal patterns. In this paper, I provide a new way of approaching two 2-pattern dialects, Kagoshima and Koshikijima Japanese, using extrametricality. Also, I extend this approach to other 2-pattern dialects, Wan and Kikaijima Japanese.

Japanese Dialects and General Linguistics

Japanese Dialects and General Linguistics

De Aomori ao Shuri: excertos do dialeto da língua japonesa

The Japanese territory, constituted by several mountainous islands, shows a wide variety of dialects, often unintelligible to other inhabitants of the country. Hoping to solve the dearth of material describing the variety of dialects found in Japan that may be useful to students of different universitylevel Japanese language courses in activity in Brazil, the following pages describe briefly some of the different aspects found among Japanese dialects in the archipelago. After the introduction of the concept of dialect, standard language, common language, and what the dialect divisions in Japan are, there is an explanation concerning language variation at the phonetic, phonological, and morphosyntactic levels of the language, as well as a sample of the Tsugaru and Tosa dialects.

Keys of Japanese prosody and didactical — technical analysis of OJAD (Online Japanese Accent Dictionary)

Abstract Most of the studies focus on the teaching of foreign languages indicate that little attention is paid to the prosodic features both didactic materials and teaching-learning processes (Martinsen, Avord and Tanner, 2014). In this context and throughout this article, an analysis of the didactical and technical dimensions of OJAD (Japanese Accent Online Dictionary) is performed, linked to a project of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics led by Minematsu (University of Tokyo). With the collection of data and information through an adaptation of the CEETP “Questionnaire for the Evaluation of Didactical, Technical and Pedagogical aspects of Educational Websites” by Cabello, Martinez-Segura and García Sánchez (2013) and supported by studies and researches of the responsible teams, it is performed an analysis of the web that allows us to highlight its positive and to be reviewed aspects from an educational point of view. OJAD is an accessible and systematic tool linked to the didactic of Japanese language, with a great potential regarding the searching criteria and adaptation to the user tool.

Overriding syntactic islands with prosodically marked wh-scope in South Kyŏngsang Korean and two dialects of Japanese

This article explores the effect of discourse context and prosody on the resolution ofwh-scope ambiguity in Tokyo Japanese, Fukuoka Japanese, and South Kyŏngsang Korean. It focuses onwh-islands in particular. There is little consensus in the literature as to whetherwh-island effects are present in Japanese or Korean (Huang 1982, Nishigauchi 1990, Lee 1982, Suh 1987, among others). A production study, in which a scope-ambiguouswh-interrogative was preceded by a disambiguating discourse context, demonstrates that speakers’ scope interpretation is consistent with the preceding discourse context. An additional comprehension study reveals that prosodicwh-scope marking observed in the languages studied improves the acceptability of the matrix scope readings in violation ofwh-islands. The experimental results support the view thatwh-island effects can be overridden by plausible discourse contexts as well as the appropriate prosodic marking ofwh-scope. These results highlight the interaction of grammatical knowledge, contextual factors, and prosody.

Foreword

This issue consists of a special report on the Japanese concept of "characters." Since the beginning of this millennium, there has been active discussion of "characters," with a steady stream of publications on the topic in not only linguistics and communication theory, but also in the fields of manga studies, modern thought, psychoanalysis, sociology, literary theory, socio-cultural theory, and media studies. But the content of the "characters" being studied is not uniform, and includes a uniquely Japanese concept of "character" that cannot be translated by the English word "character." Sometimes the word is even spelled "Kyara" in recognition of the fact that this is a concept specific to Japan.In this issue, the authors address the Japanese-born "characters" that are directly related to language and communication. Naturally, there are differences in terms of subtle nuance among the authors, but there are no large discrepancies in their use of the everyday word "character," which has been built up in the course of daily life by general Japanese speakers, especially young people. This everyday word "character" signifies an image of humanity that is not incompatible with the traditional view that "barring some extraordinary circumstance, such as the disintegration of personality, people do not change depending on the situation. What changes is style; people change their style in response to the situation." As it is taboo to overtly violate this traditional view of humanity, nobody will openly admit to "changing depending on the situation." However, on anonymous electronic bulletin boards, young people are secretly coming out about the fact that they have "different characters for school and for their part-time jobs." These are the main kind of "characters" discussed here. This issue gathers together articles that introduce knowledge obtained in Japan regarding "characters," and clarify their relationship with the Japanese language, Japanese communication, and education in both these areas. It also contains articles discussing the potential contributions of "characters" to general research in linguistics and communication, beyond the Japanese-speaking community.Toshiyuki Sadanobu presents one method of organizing the various concepts in Japan that fall under the technical term "character," shows how one type (which was, as mentioned above, created mainly by the young generation) pushes the limits of the traditional view of humanity and the speech-act view, which assumes intention, and discusses the relationship between characters and Japanese communication.Kenji Tomosada describes cases found in regional dialects that parallel Sadanobu's observations on "chara-joshi" in common Japanese. Just as the common Japanese speaker expresses his/her identity by means of "chara-joshi," so too the speaker of Japanese dialects embodies his/her identity with the sentential-final particles wa, wai, and bai. "Chara-joshi" and wa, wai, and bai also look alike in that they occur at the end of a sentence, even after the attitudinal particles.Satoshi Kinsui and Hiroko Yamakido supplement some of the deficiencies of the definition of role language in Kinsui (2003), and redefine role language as knowledge of "a manner of speaking that binds together a social or cultural group" possessed by "the majority of constituents in a linguistic community."Fumiaki Senuma investigates communities of young people in modern Japanese society and developments in his research since then. Among the young generation, individuals are sometimes assigned a specific kyara by others in their peer group, regardless of that individual's intentions.Yukiko Shukuri reports on the status of Japanese language teaching materials related to role language and characters, and describes her research project activities on role language and character in Novosibirsk, Russia.We hope that this issue will stimulate discussions on "character theory" in the worldwide context of Japanese language and culture research.