Re: Pitch

On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 10:38:05AM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> But while I know that quite a lot of Japanese words are differentiated on the
> position of their rising pitch, I know no minimal pair that differentiates only
> on the position of the dropping pitch. In Japanese at least, it's the rising
> pitch which is important.
Huh?  Christophe, what dialect of Japanese are you talking about?

My textbook (which is at home) says that the accent is the *last* high pitch
before the low pitch.  The rising pitch (aka the first high pitch) is:

        . always on the second syllable unless
        . the accent is on the first syllable in which case we start high
          and immediately go low, or
        . the previous word was accentless; it ended high and its high
          pitch spread to the next word.

In other words, the accent can be on any mora or none and is immediately
followed by a fall in pitch, but the rise in pitch is limited to the first
or second mora and strictly determined by where the fall in pitch is.

Valid:

        LHHHLLL
        LHLLLLL
        LHHHHHH
        HLLLLLL

Not valid:

        LLLHHHH
        LLHHHHL

This is for Tokyo dialect.  The rising pitch is very restricted and can't
possibly be a minimal pair since its position is completely determined by
the falling pitch.

Amanda