29 Oct 2002

Mits Ota

This study examines whether lexical and phrasal aspects of pitch phonology are acquired simultaneously or separately. In Japanese, word accent is realized as a downfall in pitch, and its location is lexically specified. In addition, phrase-initial short syllables are lowered in pitch unless they are accented, and this creates a rise from the first to second syllable of the phrase. F0 excursion data obtained from spontaneous speech produced by Japanese-speaking children (1;3-1;9) show consistent falls at the location of the target lexical accent but variable contours on non-accented phrase-initial sequences. I argue that this is due to the different realizations of lexical and phrasal features in the input data, which make phrase-initial lowering less accessible to the learner than lexical accent. The results provide a new explanation for the previous finding that 1-year-olds frequently produce falling contours for target words with rising contours (Hallé, de Boysson-Bardies & Vihman 1991).

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