The Production and Perception of Japanese Pitch Accent

Book excerpt: The word prosody of Tokyo Japanese is often labeled as pitch accent, and is characterized by a steep fall in F0 from the accented mora into the following unaccented mora. The description of Japanese pitch accent in earlier research was primarily based on the observation of a small set of minimal pairs that differed only by pitch accent, and its bearing on the perception of pitch accent was not clear. This book attempts to overcome these limitations by conducting production and perception experiments using a larger set of minimal pairs. It first examines whether earlier descriptions of Japanese pitch accent hold generally true in Japanese by thoroughly searching minimal pairs in an electronic database. It then conducts a perception study to examine whether acoustic differences found between the minimal pairs are used by listeners in word identification. The results show that some acoustic properties related to pitch accent were not used in auditory identification, underscoring the need to look at both production and perception in studying speech. This volume also includes a short review on the literature of Japanese pitch accent. The book is ideal for those interested in the issues related to phonetics and the perception of accent and word prosody.