Revisiting focus prosody in Japanese

This paper revisits Japanese focus prosody by comparing the realization of contrastive focus vs. neutral focus across 4 focus positions and 2 accenthoods. Post-focus F0 Range compression (PFC) is found only in accented stimuli, while focus in unaccented stimuli is marked by Min F0 lowering. Penultimate focus differs from other focus positions, in terms of its post-focus behavior. Intensity and Duration manifest patterns of focus marker distribution comparable to those of F0. These results combined confirm that focus realization interacts closely with accenthood and focus position, and have implications that may enhance our understanding of Japanese pitch accent in general. Copyright © 2012 International Speech Communications Association.