2010 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Mismatches between the production and perception of Japanese pitch accent

Research Project

Project/Area Number	21820036
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Linguistics
Research Institution	Keio University
Principal Investigator	SUGIYAMA Yukiko Keio University, 理工学部, 講師 (70525112)
Project Period (FY)	2009 – 2010
Keywords	日本語 / アクセント / 韻律 / 音声産出
Research Abstract	This research investigated if Tokyo-Japanese pitch accent has an acoustic cue other than the fundamental frequency (=F0). Minimal pairs of final-accented and unaccented words that had relatively high familiarity ratings were identified using a database. The two types of words did not differ reliably in terms of the frequencies of the complete vowel devoicing or the durations of the word-final moras. A perception study that examines an acoustic correlate of accent other than the FO and duration is currently underway.

(2 results)