Dissertation

Edgy Prosody: An Articulatory Investigation of the Role of Lexical Pitch Accent in Tokyo Japanese Boundary Marking

Tsai, Karen

2023

Overview

This dissertation examines the interaction of word prosody with prosodic temporal and tonal events at the phrasal level in Tokyo Japanese and aims to provide a unified account of the coordination relations between them within the framework of Articulatory Phonology. Previous research on phrase-final lengthening and boundary tone coordination in stress languages such as Greek has found that there is some coordination between lexical and phrasal prosodic events, as well as between tonal and temporal phrasal events. Specifically, research on the interaction between word prosody and boundary events in Greek indicates that lexical stress presents similar timing patterns with phrase-final lengthening as with boundary tone initiation, which suggests that these two types of boundary-marking events (i.e., phrase-final lengthening and boundary tones) are timed with respect to each other. This dissertation investigates these relations in a language with lexical pitch accent and proposes an account of the interaction of word prosody with boundary marking within the framework of Articulatory Phonology.In Articulatory Phonology, consonants and vowels are represented as sets of constriction gestures in the vocal tract. Tonal events are also represented as sets of tone gestures which unfold over time and can be coordinated with constriction gestures. Phenomena such as phrase-final lengthening are accounted for by π-gestures, which instantiate prosodic phrase boundaries and have clock-slowing effects on co-active speech gestures. We examine how these types of gestures are coordinated with each other in Japanese by analyzing kinematic and acoustic data of various Japanese words in controlled phrases. These data were collected using EMA (electromagnetic articulography) in experiments designed to test the interaction of lexical pitch accent position with phrase-final lengthening and boundary tone coordination. Three analyses were conducted on (i) the effect of pitch accent on the scope of phrase-final lengthening, (ii) the effect of pitch accent on boundary tone coordination, and (iii) the kinematic correlates of pitch accent per se. Lexical pitch accent position was found to have an effect on the scope of phrase-final lengthening such that the latter was initiated earlier in words with non-final pitch accent. These results imply that the tone gesture for the pitch accent is coordinated with the π-gesture. Similarly, pitch accent position was found to affect the timing of the boundary tone, which was initiated earlier in words with earlier pitch accent. Finally, no robust kinematic correlate of pitch accent was detected. On the basis of these finding, a final account is proposed where the lexical pitch accent gesture is coordinated anti-phase with the boundary tone, which in turn affects πgesture coordination. This account considers tonal and temporal prosodic events together, which may provide a more complete view of intonation and of how word- and phrase-level events are connected.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Asian Studies / Linguistics
• ISBN: 9798379498245