Observations of m=1 Helical Kink Instabilities in a Reversed Field Pinch

Training English Listeners to Identify Pitch-Accent Patterns in Tokyo Japanese

“…This indicates that even in the arguably most difficult test of this study (new stimuli and new talker), trainees retained their lead, especially, for the unaccented pattern. The unequal identification accuracy across patterns in six Japanese listeners may be attributed to neutralization of the unaccented and 2nd-syllable accented contrast in some contexts (Shport, 2014; Sugito, 1982b; Sugiyama, 2012; Vance, 1995).…”

“…The target words were played to the participants in their sentential contexts in order to facilitate perceptual learning by providing additional phrase-level acoustic cues to pitch-accent contrasts (Pierrehumbert & Beckman, 1988; Sugito, 1982b; Vance, 1995) and phonetic variability in the stimuli (Hirata, 1999; Lee et al, 2009; Nishinuma et al, 1996). The list of sentences in Table 1 shows that they varied in the position of the target word (sentence-initial in 1, 3–6 vs. sentence-medial in 2, 7); the accentual type of the following lexical word (accented in 4, 5 vs. unaccented in 1–2, 6); and the type of sentence-final boundary tones (low tones in sentences 1–2 and 4, high tones in questions 6–7, high insisting-rise tones in 3, 5).…”

“…Pitch accent in Tokyo Japanese is a high-low accent, which is implemented as an F 0 peak near the end of the accented mora followed by a steep F 0 fall. This steep F 0 fall is the fundamental acoustic correlate of the pitch accent in production and the primary acoustic cue to accent in perception (Pierrehumbert & Beckman, 1988; Sugito, 1982a; Sugiyama, 2012; Venditti, 2005). In disyllabic words, the presence of the F 0 fall differentiates between accented and unaccented words, and the location of the F 0 peak differentiates between 1st- and 2nd-syllable accented words (Figure 1).…”

“…In disyllabic words, the presence of the F 0 fall differentiates between accented and unaccented words, and the location of the F 0 peak differentiates between 1st- and 2nd-syllable accented words (Figure 1). In productions of some native speakers, the contrast between 2nd-syllable accented and unaccented words may be sometimes neutralized (Shport, 2014; Sugito, 1982b; Sugiyama, 2012; Vance, 1995).

Figure 1. Averaged F 0 contours of words produced by three native speakers of Tokyo Japanese (18 words × 3 pitch patterns × 3 repetitions).

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“…They may also include F 0 peak height, phrase-initial F 0 rise to the peak, and the degree of F 0 fall across the phrase. Specifically, the F 0 peak has a larger value for the lexical high tone of the pitch accent than the phrasal high tone; accented phrases have a greater degree of the phrase-initial F 0 rise than their unaccented counterparts; and the F 0 fall is steeper in accented phrases than in unaccented phrases due to the lowering of all tonal targets following the lexical pitch accent in a phrase (Pierrehumbert & Beckman, 1988; Sugito, 1982b; Sugiyama, 2012). Figure 2 illustrates these cues to the accentually contrastive mori words in four sentential contexts.…”