JapaneseLesson 1 of 2 in the course Japanese phonology and history

Pitch-Accent Systems: Contours, Morphology, and Cross-Linguistic Variation

5 flashcards · 5 quiz questions · 5 match pairs · 5 fill-in sentences · English

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Summary

This lesson introduces pitch accent and distinguishes it from stress and tone. These distinctions matter because languages use pitch in different ways to organize words and phrases.

A pitch-accent language uses a pitch contrast to make one syllable or morpheme more prominent than others in a word. Pitch is the perceived highness or lowness of the voice. The pitch movement may be a high tone, a fall, or another contour, depending on the language.

All flashcards

Pitch-accent language
A language in which pitch is an important cue to word-level prominence.
Lexical accent
An accent belonging to a word or morpheme's accentual pattern.
Default tone
A tone supplied by a language's regular pattern when a word or syllable lacks a specified accent.
Anticipation
The appearance of high pitch on syllables before the accent associated with it.
Forward spreading
The extension of a tone from its source onto following syllables.

Quiz questions

  1. In Tokyo Japanese, what commonly identifies the location of a word accent?Answer: A pitch fall after the accented syllable
  2. What is peak delay in a pitch-accent pattern?Answer: The pitch maximum occurs at the start of the following syllable.
  3. In Northern Bizkaian Basque, what can a preaccenting suffix do?Answer: Cause an accent to appear on the syllable before the suffix
  4. What distinguishes forward spreading from anticipation?Answer: Forward spreading carries a tone onto syllables after its source.
  5. How is Proto-Indo-European pitch accent generally reconstructed?Answer: Its accent location was not predictable from the word's sound structure.

Based on the Wikipedia article Pitch-accent language, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Adapted into a summary, flashcards and quizzes.

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