Accent Reduction and Restrictive Modification in Tokyo Japanese

Abstract

The level of phonetic realization of lexical accent (reduced level, which, in the case of words with an accent kernel, is exhibited by a low F0 value, or full level) is one of the major determinants of sentence intonation in Tokyo Japanese. Three experiments were conducted to provide evidence to support the author's previous claim that the reduction of accent level is triggered by semantically restrictive modification, and not by syntax. In Experiment 1, F0 values of the first two constituents of [[A[BC]]D] and [A[[BC]D]] were compared. The results indicated the irrelevance of overall syntactic branching structure for the accent level. In Experiments 2 and 3, peak F0 values of nouns with an accent kernel in semantically restrictive and non-restrictive conditions were investigated acoustically and perceptually. The results supported the prediction: nouns have lower F0 values when they are semantically restricted by the directly preceding modifier than when they are not.