Japanese pitch accent
Encyclopedia
Japanese pitch accent
(高低アクセント kōtei akusento) is a feature of the Japanese language
which distinguishes words in most Japanese dialects, though the nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects. For instance, in standard Tokyo
Japanese the word for "now" is [iꜜma], with the accent on the first mora
(or equivalently, with a downstep in pitch between the first and second morae
), but in the Kansai dialect it is [i.maꜜ]. A final [i] or [u] is often devoiced to [i̥] or [u̥] after a downstep and an unvoiced consonant.
Note that these rules apply to phonological word
s, which include any added particles. So the sequence "hashi" spoken in isolation can be accented in two ways, either háshi (accent on the first syllable, meaning 'chopsticks') or hashí (flat or accent on the second syllable, meaning either 'edge' or 'bridge'), while "hashi" plus the subject-marker "ga" can be accented on the first, second, or be flat/accentless: háshiga 'chopsticks', hashíga 'bridge', or hashigá 'edge'.
In poetry, a word such as 面白い omoshirói, which has the accent on the fourth mora ro, is pronounced in five beats (moras), with the tone gradually rising over the omoshiro, then dropping suddenly on the i. Outside poetry, the two moras of roi get slurred into a diphthong like English "boy", and are pronounced with a falling tone.
s analyse Japanese pitch accent somewhat differently. In their view, a word either has a downstep
or it does not. If it does, the pitch drops between the accented mora and the subsequent one; if it does not have a downstep, the pitch remains more or less constant throughout the length of the word: That is, the pitch is "flat" as Japanese speakers describe it. The initial rise in the pitch of the word, and the gradual rise and fall of pitch across a word, arise not from lexical accent, but rather from prosody
which is added to the word by its context: If the first word in a phrase
does not have an accent on the first mora, then it starts with a low pitch, which then rises to high over subsequent moras. This phrasal prosody is applied to individual words only when they are spoken in isolation. Within a phrase, each downstep triggers another drop in pitch, and this accounts for a gradual drop in pitch throughout the phrase. This drop is called terracing
. The next phrase thus starts off near the low end of the speaker's pitch range and needs to reset to high before the next downstep can occur.
, is considered essential in jobs such as broadcasting. The current standards for pitch accent are presented in special accent dictionaries for native speakers such as the Shin Meikai Nihongo Akusento Jiten (新明解日本語アクセント辞典) and the NHK Nihongo Hatsuon Akusento Jiten (NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典). Newsreaders and other speech professionals are required to follow these standards.
Foreign learners of Japanese are often not taught to pronounce the pitch accent, though it is included in some noted texts, such as Japanese: The Spoken Language
. Incorrect pitch accent is a strong characteristic of a "foreign accent" in Japanese.
Japanese, non-compound native nouns are accented about 30% of the time. Most of the time the accent falls on the ante-penultimate mora, or on the first mora for shorter words. A smaller number of nouns are accented on other syllables. (I-adjectives, however, are usually accented, and always on the penultimate mora.) Phonemic pitch accent is indicated with the phonetic symbol
for downstep
, [ꜜ].
In isolation, the words hashi /hasiꜜ/ "bridge" and hashi /hasi/ "edge" are pronounced identically, starting low and rising to a high pitch. However, the difference becomes clear in context. With the simple addition of the particle ni "at", for example, /hasiꜜni/ "at the bridge" acquires a marked drop in pitch, while /hasini/ "at the edge" does not.
This property of the Japanese language allows for a certain type of pun, called dajare
(駄洒落 だじゃれ), combining two words with the same or very similar sounds but different pitch accents and thus meanings. For example, kaeru-ga kaeru /kaeruɡa kaꜜeru/ (蛙が帰る; the frog went home). These are considered quite corny, and are associated with oyaji gags (親父ギャグ, oyaji gyagu) (old man/uncle, terminally uncool).
Most of the dialects which have Tokyo type accent, like the standard Tokyo dialect described above, Tokai
and Chugoku
, have a more-or-less high tone in unaccented nouns (though first mora has low tone, and following moras have high tone); an accent takes the form of a downstep, after which the tone stays low. Some dialects like in Northern Tohoku, typically have a more-or-less low tone in unaccented nouns; accented syllables have a high tone, with low tone on either side, rather like English stress accent. The Kyoto-Osaka type accent areas of Kansai
and Shikoku
have nouns with both patterns: That is, they have tone differences in unaccented as well as accented words, and both downstep in high-tone words and a high-tone accent in low-tone words. On the periphery of Japan, in parts of Kyushu
, northeastern Kanto and southern Tohoku, nouns are not accented at all, though yet further out (northern Tohoku and Hokkaido
) Tokyo-type accents again prevail.
-ga or ablative
-kara:
In the Shuri dialect of the old capital of Okinawa, unaccented words are high tone; accent takes the form of a downstep after the second syllable, or after the first syllable of a disyllabic noun.
, in Kansai, Shikoku, and the easternmost Western Japanese dialects, there is a more innovative system, and a combination of these patterns. This system will be illustrated with the Kansai dialect of Osaka
.
In Osaka, unaccented nouns may be either high or low tone. High-tone unaccented nouns are realized with a high tone on every syllable; an example is sakura 'cherry tree', which triggers high tone in following unaccented particles, as do unaccented nouns in Tokyo, but purely high tone:
Low-tone unaccented nouns such as usagi 'rabbit' are realized with a low tone on every syllable but the last, just as they are in Kagoshima:
(Hokuriku dialect
in Suzu
is similar, but unaccented low-tone words are purely low, without the rise at the end: [ùsàŋì], [ùsàŋìŋà], [ùsàŋìkàɽà]; sakura has the same pattern as in Osaka.)
High-tone accented nouns in Osaka are like all accented nouns in Tokyo, except that the pitch is uniformly high prior to the downstep, rather than rising as in Tokyo; also, the downstep generally occurs one syllable earlier than in the older Tokyo system. As in Tokyo, nouns differ in where the accent occurs. For example, kokoro 'heart' is kokóro in Tokyo but kókoro in Osaka; atama 'head' is atamá in Tokyo but atáma in Osaka:
Low-tone accented nouns are like accented words in Kagoshima, except that again there are many exceptions to the default placement of the accent. For example, tokage is accented on the ka in both Osaka and Kagoshima, but omonaga 'oval face' is accented on mo in Osaka and na in Kagoshima (the default position for both dialects); also, in Osaka the accented is fixed on the mo, whereas in Kagoshima it shifts when particles are added:
In Tokyo, whereas most non-compound native nouns have no accent, most verbs, including adjectives, do. Moreover, the accent is always on the penultimate mora, that is, the last mora of the verb stem. In Kansai, however, verbs have high- and low-tone paradigms as nouns do. High-tone verbs are either unaccented or are accented on the penultimate mora, as in Tokyo. Low-tone verbs are either unaccented or accented on the final syllable, triggering a low tone on unaccented suffixes. In Kyoto, verbal tone varies irregularly with inflection, a situation not found in more conservative dialects, even more conservative Kansai-type dialects such as that of Kōchi
in Shikoku.
' is [tóm̀bì] in Tokyo but [tòḿbì] in Osaka.
Pitch accent
Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
(高低アクセント kōtei akusento) is a feature of the Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
which distinguishes words in most Japanese dialects, though the nature and location of the accent for a given word may vary between dialects. For instance, in standard Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
Japanese the word for "now" is [iꜜma], with the accent on the first mora
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
(or equivalently, with a downstep in pitch between the first and second morae
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
), but in the Kansai dialect it is [i.maꜜ]. A final [i] or [u] is often devoiced to [i̥] or [u̥] after a downstep and an unvoiced consonant.
Scalar pitch
In standard Japanese (標準語 hyōjungo), pitch accent has the following effect on words spoken in isolation:- If the accent is on the first moraMora (linguistics)Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
, then the pitchPitch (music)Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
starts high, drops suddenly on the second mora, then goes down more slowly. The drop in pitch occurs mostly during the consonant of the second mora, if there is one, so that the actual fall in pitch is seldom audible. However, if the second mora is a single vowel, the pitch will start out high and fall to low during that vowel. A native speaker will still hear the first mora as accented. - If the accent is on a mora other than the first or the last, then the pitch rises from mora to mora, reaching a near maximum at the accented mora, then dropping suddenly on the next mora. Japanese speakers hear the mora preceding the mora with the sudden drop as accented.
- If the word doesn't have an accent, the pitch rises from mora to mora from the start of the word to the end, as in FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. Japanese describe their sound as "flat" (平板 heiban) or "accentless".
Note that these rules apply to phonological word
Phonological word
The phonological word or prosodic word is a constituent in the phonological hierarchy higher than the syllable and the foot but lower than intonational phrase and the phonological phrase...
s, which include any added particles. So the sequence "hashi" spoken in isolation can be accented in two ways, either háshi (accent on the first syllable, meaning 'chopsticks') or hashí (flat or accent on the second syllable, meaning either 'edge' or 'bridge'), while "hashi" plus the subject-marker "ga" can be accented on the first, second, or be flat/accentless: háshiga 'chopsticks', hashíga 'bridge', or hashigá 'edge'.
In poetry, a word such as 面白い omoshirói, which has the accent on the fourth mora ro, is pronounced in five beats (moras), with the tone gradually rising over the omoshiro, then dropping suddenly on the i. Outside poetry, the two moras of roi get slurred into a diphthong like English "boy", and are pronounced with a falling tone.
Binary pitch
The foregoing describes the actual pitch. In most guides, however, accent is presented with a two-pitch-level model. In this representation, each mora is either high (H) or low (L) in pitch.- If the accent is on the first mora, then the first syllable is high-pitched and the others are low: H-L, H-L-L, H-L-L-L, H-L-L-L-L, etc.
- If the accent is on a mora other than the first, then the first mora is low, the following moras up to and including the accented one are high, and the rest are low: L-H, L-H-L, L-H-H-L, L-H-H-H-L, etc.
- If the word is heiban (doesn't have an accent), the first mora is low and the others are high: L-H, L-H-H, L-H-H-H, L-H-H-H-H, etc. This high pitch spreads to unaccented grammatical particlesJapanese particlesJapanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness....
that attach to the end of the word, whereas these would have a low pitch when attached to an accented word.
Downstep
Many linguistLinguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
s analyse Japanese pitch accent somewhat differently. In their view, a word either has a downstep
Downstep (phonetics)
In phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. It is best known in the tonal languages of West Africa, but the pitch accent of Japanese is quite similar to downstep in Africa. Downstep contrasts with the much rarer upstep...
or it does not. If it does, the pitch drops between the accented mora and the subsequent one; if it does not have a downstep, the pitch remains more or less constant throughout the length of the word: That is, the pitch is "flat" as Japanese speakers describe it. The initial rise in the pitch of the word, and the gradual rise and fall of pitch across a word, arise not from lexical accent, but rather from prosody
Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
which is added to the word by its context: If the first word in a phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
does not have an accent on the first mora, then it starts with a low pitch, which then rises to high over subsequent moras. This phrasal prosody is applied to individual words only when they are spoken in isolation. Within a phrase, each downstep triggers another drop in pitch, and this accounts for a gradual drop in pitch throughout the phrase. This drop is called terracing
Tone terracing
Tone terracing is a type of phonetic downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone, shift downward in pitch after certain other tones...
. The next phrase thus starts off near the low end of the speaker's pitch range and needs to reset to high before the next downstep can occur.
Correct pitch accent
Normative pitch accent, essentially the pitch accent of the Tokyo dialectTokyo dialect
refers to the Japanese dialect spoken in modern Tokyo. The dialect in modern Tokyo is often considered to equate standard Japanese, though in fact the Tokyo dialect differs from standard Japanese in a number of areas.- Overview :...
, is considered essential in jobs such as broadcasting. The current standards for pitch accent are presented in special accent dictionaries for native speakers such as the Shin Meikai Nihongo Akusento Jiten (新明解日本語アクセント辞典) and the NHK Nihongo Hatsuon Akusento Jiten (NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典). Newsreaders and other speech professionals are required to follow these standards.
Foreign learners of Japanese are often not taught to pronounce the pitch accent, though it is included in some noted texts, such as Japanese: The Spoken Language
Japanese: The Spoken Language
Japanese: The Spoken Language is an introductory textbook series for learning Japanese. JSL was written by Eleanor Harz Jorden in collaboration with Mari Noda. Part 1 was published in 1987 by Yale Language Press, Part 2 in 1988, and Part 3 in 1990...
. Incorrect pitch accent is a strong characteristic of a "foreign accent" in Japanese.
Examples of words which differ only in pitch
In standard TokyoTokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
Japanese, non-compound native nouns are accented about 30% of the time. Most of the time the accent falls on the ante-penultimate mora, or on the first mora for shorter words. A smaller number of nouns are accented on other syllables. (I-adjectives, however, are usually accented, and always on the penultimate mora.) Phonemic pitch accent is indicated with the phonetic symbol
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
for downstep
Downstep (phonetics)
In phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. It is best known in the tonal languages of West Africa, but the pitch accent of Japanese is quite similar to downstep in Africa. Downstep contrasts with the much rarer upstep...
, [ꜜ].
| Romanization | Accent on first mora | Accent on second mora | Accentless | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hashi | /haꜜsi/ [háɕi] |
箸 | chopsticks | /hasiꜜ/ [hàɕí] |
橋 | bridge | /hasi/ [hàɕí] |
端 | edge |
| hashi-ni | /haꜜsini/ [háɕìnì] |
箸に | at the chopsticks | /hasiꜜni/ [hàɕínì] |
橋に | at the bridge | /hasini/ [hàɕīní] |
端に | at the edge |
| ima | /iꜜma/ [ímà] |
今 | now | /imaꜜ/ [ìmá] |
居間 | living room | |||
| kaki | /kaꜜki/ [kákì] |
牡蠣 | oyster | /kakiꜜ/ [kàkí] |
垣 | fence | /kaki/ [kàkí] |
柿 | persimmon |
| kaki-ni | /kaꜜkini/ [kákìnì] |
牡蠣に | at the oyster | /kakiꜜni/ [kàkínì] |
垣に | at the fence | /kakini/ [kàkīní] |
柿に | at the persimmon |
| sake | /saꜜke/ [sákè] |
鮭 | salmon | /sake/ [sàké] |
酒 | alcohol, sake | |||
| nihon | /niꜜhoɴ/ [níhòɴ̀] |
二本 | two sticks of Japanese counter word In Japanese, counter words or counters are used along with numbers to count things, actions, and events.In Japanese, as in Chinese and Korean, numerals cannot quantify nouns by themselves... |
/nihoꜜɴ/ [nìhóɴ̀] |
日本 | Japan | |||
In isolation, the words hashi /hasiꜜ/ "bridge" and hashi /hasi/ "edge" are pronounced identically, starting low and rising to a high pitch. However, the difference becomes clear in context. With the simple addition of the particle ni "at", for example, /hasiꜜni/ "at the bridge" acquires a marked drop in pitch, while /hasini/ "at the edge" does not.
This property of the Japanese language allows for a certain type of pun, called dajare
Dajare
is a kind of comic Japanese word play, similar in spirit to pun relying on similarities in the pronunciation of words to create a simple joke.Dajare are popular in advertising...
(駄洒落 だじゃれ), combining two words with the same or very similar sounds but different pitch accents and thus meanings. For example, kaeru-ga kaeru /kaeruɡa kaꜜeru/ (蛙が帰る; the frog went home). These are considered quite corny, and are associated with oyaji gags (親父ギャグ, oyaji gyagu) (old man/uncle, terminally uncool).
Other dialects
Accent and tone are the most variable aspect of Japanese dialects. Some have no accent at all; of those that do, it may occur in addition to word tone.Most of the dialects which have Tokyo type accent, like the standard Tokyo dialect described above, Tokai
Tokai region
The is a sub-region of the Chūbu region in Japan that runs along the Pacific Ocean. The name means "East sea" and comes from the Tōkaidō, one of the Edo Five Routes...
and Chugoku
Chugoku region
The , also known as the , is the westernmost region of Honshū, the largest island of Japan. It consists of the prefectures of Hiroshima, Okayama, Shimane, Tottori and Yamaguchi. It has a population of about 7.8 million.- History :...
, have a more-or-less high tone in unaccented nouns (though first mora has low tone, and following moras have high tone); an accent takes the form of a downstep, after which the tone stays low. Some dialects like in Northern Tohoku, typically have a more-or-less low tone in unaccented nouns; accented syllables have a high tone, with low tone on either side, rather like English stress accent. The Kyoto-Osaka type accent areas of Kansai
Kansai
The or the lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Mie, Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo, and Shiga. Depending on who makes the distinction, Fukui, Tokushima and even Tottori Prefecture are also included...
and Shikoku
Shikoku
is the smallest and least populous of the four main islands of Japan, located south of Honshū and east of the island of Kyūshū. Its ancient names include Iyo-no-futana-shima , Iyo-shima , and Futana-shima...
have nouns with both patterns: That is, they have tone differences in unaccented as well as accented words, and both downstep in high-tone words and a high-tone accent in low-tone words. On the periphery of Japan, in parts of Kyushu
Kyushu
is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include , , and . The historical regional name is referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands....
, northeastern Kanto and southern Tohoku, nouns are not accented at all, though yet further out (northern Tohoku and Hokkaido
Hokkaido
, formerly known as Ezo, Yezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is Japan's second largest island; it is also the largest and northernmost of Japan's 47 prefectural-level subdivisions. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu, although the two islands are connected by the underwater railway Seikan Tunnel...
) Tokyo-type accents again prevail.
Kyushu
In western and southern Kyushu dialects, a high tone falls on a predictable syllable, depending only on whether the noun has an accent. For instance, Miyakonojo, there is no accent at all; phonological words have a low tone until the final syllable, at which point the pitch rises. In Kagoshima dialect, unaccented nouns are similar, but in addition there are accented nouns, in which the penultimate syllable of a phonological word has a high tone. (Kagoshima phonology is not based on moras.) For example, irogami 'colored paper' is unaccented in Kagoshima, while kagaribi is accented. The ultimate or penultimate high tone will shift to any unaccented grammatical particle that is added, such as nominativeNominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
-ga or ablative
Ablative case
In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...
-kara:
- [ìɽòɡàmí], [ìɽòɡàmìɡá], [ìɽòɡàmìkàɽá]
- [kàɡàɽíbì], [kàɡàɽìbíɡà], [kàɡàɽìbìkáɽà
In the Shuri dialect of the old capital of Okinawa, unaccented words are high tone; accent takes the form of a downstep after the second syllable, or after the first syllable of a disyllabic noun.
Kyoto-Osaka
Near the old capital of KyotoKyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
, in Kansai, Shikoku, and the easternmost Western Japanese dialects, there is a more innovative system, and a combination of these patterns. This system will be illustrated with the Kansai dialect of Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
.
In Osaka, unaccented nouns may be either high or low tone. High-tone unaccented nouns are realized with a high tone on every syllable; an example is sakura 'cherry tree', which triggers high tone in following unaccented particles, as do unaccented nouns in Tokyo, but purely high tone:
- [sákúɽá], [sákúɽáɡá], [sákúɽákáɽá].
Low-tone unaccented nouns such as usagi 'rabbit' are realized with a low tone on every syllable but the last, just as they are in Kagoshima:
- [ùsàɡí], [ùsàɡìɡá], [ùsàɡìkàɽá].
(Hokuriku dialect
Hokuriku dialect
The is a Japanese dialect group spoken in Hokuriku region, consists of Fukui Prefecture, Ishikawa Prefecture, Toyama Prefecture, and Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture...
in Suzu
Suzu, Ishikawa
is a city located at the northeasternmost tip of the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa, Japan. The city is the proposed site of the Suzu Nuclear Power Plant; however, in 2003 the proposal was "frozen" until further notice....
is similar, but unaccented low-tone words are purely low, without the rise at the end: [ùsàŋì], [ùsàŋìŋà], [ùsàŋìkàɽà]; sakura has the same pattern as in Osaka.)
High-tone accented nouns in Osaka are like all accented nouns in Tokyo, except that the pitch is uniformly high prior to the downstep, rather than rising as in Tokyo; also, the downstep generally occurs one syllable earlier than in the older Tokyo system. As in Tokyo, nouns differ in where the accent occurs. For example, kokoro 'heart' is kokóro in Tokyo but kókoro in Osaka; atama 'head' is atamá in Tokyo but atáma in Osaka:
- [átámà], [átámàɡà], [átámàkàɽà]
Low-tone accented nouns are like accented words in Kagoshima, except that again there are many exceptions to the default placement of the accent. For example, tokage is accented on the ka in both Osaka and Kagoshima, but omonaga 'oval face' is accented on mo in Osaka and na in Kagoshima (the default position for both dialects); also, in Osaka the accented is fixed on the mo, whereas in Kagoshima it shifts when particles are added:
- [òmónàɡà], [òmónàɡàɡà], [òmónàɡàkàɽà]
In Tokyo, whereas most non-compound native nouns have no accent, most verbs, including adjectives, do. Moreover, the accent is always on the penultimate mora, that is, the last mora of the verb stem. In Kansai, however, verbs have high- and low-tone paradigms as nouns do. High-tone verbs are either unaccented or are accented on the penultimate mora, as in Tokyo. Low-tone verbs are either unaccented or accented on the final syllable, triggering a low tone on unaccented suffixes. In Kyoto, verbal tone varies irregularly with inflection, a situation not found in more conservative dialects, even more conservative Kansai-type dialects such as that of Kōchi
Kochi, Kochi
is the capital city of Kōchi Prefecture on Shikoku island of Japan.Kōchi is the main city of the prefecture with over 40% of its population. As of May 31, 2008, the city had an estimated population of 340,515 and a density of...
in Shikoku.
Syllabic and moraic
Japanese pitch accent also varies in how it interacts with syllables and moras. Kagoshima is a purely syllabic dialect, while Osaka is moraic. For example, the low-tone unaccented noun simbun 'newspaper' is [ɕìm̀búɴ́] in Kagoshima, with the high tone spread across the entire final syllable bun, but in Osaka it is [ɕìm̀bùɴ́], with the high tone restricted to the final mora n. It Tokyo, accent placement is constrained by the syllable, though the downstep occurs between the moras of that syllable. That is, a stressed syllable in Tokyo dialect, as in kai 'shell' or 算 san 'divining rod', will always have the pattern /kaꜜi/ [káì], /saꜜɴ/ [sáɴ̀], never */kaiꜜ/, */saɴꜜ/. In Osaka, however, either pattern may occur: tombi 'black kiteBlack Kite
The Black Kite is a medium-sized bird of prey in the family Accipitridae, which also includes many other diurnal raptors. Unlike others of the group, they are opportunistic hunters and are more likely to scavenge. They spend a lot of time soaring and gliding in thermals in search of food. Their...
' is [tóm̀bì] in Tokyo but [tòḿbì] in Osaka.