Spread of high tone in akita Japanese

The present study explores the phonetic implementation of accentual H(igh) tone of the Akita dialect of Japanese, specifically its timing control. Lexical accent in the dialect is implemented as an eminence in F0. The conspicuous feature is that F0 does not fall sharply as in Tokyo Japanese. Two hypotheses are examined concerning the extent of the duration of the pitch summit. One is that the H lasts for some fixed period of time. The other is that it lasts until some prosodic edge appears. An experimental study was performed for two native speakers of Akita, with a speaker of Tokyo dialect. The comparison elucidates the conspicuous characteristics of the phonetic implementation of the lexical accent differing from Tokyo Japanese. The result grossly supports the latter hypothesis. It suggests that the H tone in the dialect is phonetically implemented so that it lasts until the end of a Intonational Phrase.