Perceptual Category Structure of Pitch Accent in Tokyo Japanese

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Mafuyu Kitahara
Shigeaki Amano

Abstract

This paper investigates perceptual categories of contrastive pitch accents in Tokyo Japanese. Pitch movement of the accent, the preceding context of the accent, the tonal structure in an accentual phrase, and the vowel devoicing in and after the accented mora have been investigated independently and unsystematically in the previous studies. The present study integrates all these factors in a unified way to find the category structure of all opposition types in 2-mora words using a set of F0-resynthesized stimuli. Results from a comparison among different voicing conditions reveal that the contrast is degraded according to which part of tonal information is lost in the stimuli. A systematic comparison between a 2-way and a 3-way distinction reveals that the accent-location detection and the accent-presence detection are functionally separate processes. Finally, the preceding tonal context of the pitch accent has little contribution to the structure of contrast.

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