Abstract
The Rikuchu-Miyako dialect-spoken in the central area of Miyako city in Iwate prefecture, northern Japan-has a unique word accent system (Tanaka 2003). In this dialect, a sentence conveys a particular modal meaning when its final vowel is lengthened and pronounced with either a high pitch or a rise-fall pitch movement, depending on the accentual type of the final word. For example, when the adjective "suzusi" (comfortably cool) is pronounced [ sɯzɯsɯː⧵ː⧵], it means "I can say it is pleasantly cool here" and not just "It's cool." In this paper, the conditions under which this prosodic phenomenon occurs, along with its social and geographical aspects, are examined by analyzing utterances ending in a noun, verb, adjective or function word.
