Phrase Initial Pitch Rising Caused by Parallelism or Focus Markers in Tokyo, Okayama City and Kochi City Dialects

Abstract

This paper first illustrates suprasegmentals of Tokyo, Okayama City and Kochi City dialects, and points out that Kochi City's “high- or low-register” as intonations have functions similar to those of Tokyo and Okayama City's “phrase initial pitch rising (PIPR for short) ”. Then, this paper cites a preceding study which shows that PIPR occurs very easily in environments such as parallelism and focus markers (such as “sae, mo, nara, wa”), and lastly, to verify and enforce this hyphothesis, demonstrates the result of research on intonations of 92 informants from those areas.