To investigate the conditions under which two consecutive words (or 'bunsetsu') are dephrased, two factors, grammatical relationship and mora-size, were analyzed using the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ). The results showed the highest rate of dephrasing when an adjective and a noun produced a noun phrase, or a verb and a noun produced a noun phrase. It is considered that a phonological word which is syntactically preposed into the modifier position of a noun has a focus, in that the modifier expresses exhaustive identification among the members of a set of alternative entities, and this focus has an effect on dephrasing. The analysis based on mora-size, from six to thirteen morae, showed that the rate of dephrasing was in inverse proportion to the mora-size of two words. An increase in the mora-size lowered the rate of dephrasing. It is considered that there is a tendency to avoid constructing extremely large minor phrases. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to determine the variables that predict dephrasing. The model with the lowest AIC included grammatical relationship and mora-size as significant predictors, but not the interaction of them. The correct prediction rate of dephrasing by means of the logistic regression model was 65.58%.

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In this paper, the accents of conjunctive, conclusive, and attributive adjectives were analyzed utilizing the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ). A comparison of accented and unaccented-type adjectives revealed that the former were overwhelmingly more common. Also, as has been previously reported, in the conjunctive form accented type words and unaccented-type words are integrated. However some differences were found in the respective usage of each type. Likewise, in the conclusive form there was also a tendency for accented and unaccented types to be integrated. Attributive forms, by contrast, were found to retain their original accent patterns.

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The author argues that the loss of Proto-Japanese right edge tone, a possible source of the pitch accent HL, left the lexical tone systems in Kyushu with only non-falling tones: H+ (high level), L+{(low level with the right edge rise), L+H (slow rising), and LH+ (fast rising). The present-day tonal variants in Kyushu are explained as outcomes of the combinations of four major innovations, of which two are mutually exclusive: (1) the merging of L+{, L+H and LH+, (2) the shifting of H+ to LH+} or L+{(H+}) with the phonemicization of the previously phonetic falling edge tone,}, (3) the raising of L+ in L+{and L+H, which gave rise to the pitch accent H]H, and (4) LH+ taking on word-initial accentuation.

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An extended morphing which enables time varying multi-aspect morphing of arbitrary many voices was recently formulated. This article introduces speech research tools based on this extended morphing to invite researchers to an exciting research field of para- and non-linguistic aspects of speech communications. This article also introduces a set of realtime visualization tools of sounds using the realtime functionality of Matlab to facilitate understanding of underlying signal processing and human auditory perception basics.

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