The essence and possible interpretations of pitch accent in Japanese

Abstract

Musical (pitch) accent is one of the most difficult aspects of Japanese phonetics. A brief review of recent publications on Japanese accent (JA) is given. Based on published works and experimental data, the author supports the two-step (low and high) register pattern as adequate for JA description rather than the three-step (low, middle and high) tonal system accepted by some phoneticians. A wider interpretation of the role of accent contours is assigned to JA; a word distinctive function is one of them. These findings are important for adequate description, teaching and learning of Japanese.

Keywords:

pitch accent, accent contour, functions of accent, word distinction