Abstract
In Japanese accentology, it has been under dispute whether kakoo-shiki, or falling pitch register, should be recognized as a phonological category, independent of so-called kooki-shiki, or high-beginning pitch register. A production study was carried out on 7 dialect groups with 3 different shiki systems, where cross-dialectal comparisons are made on the properties of pitch (fundamental frequency) contour patterns of different shiki types. The results reveal that the kakoo-shiki can be characterized as having (i) steeper pitch fall toward the end of the word and (ii) later onset of the pitch fall, as compared with kooki-shiki. Both of these tendencies were confirmed with the second production study where the mora length of the experimental words was varied. This set of findings suggests that it is possible to define kako-shiki by examining the acoustic (pitch contour) properties of the relevant shiki types.
