Aspects of the pitch-accent system of Ibuki-jima

Abstract

This dissertation explores the pitch accent of Ibukijima, Kan'onji City, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan which had been discovered, in the mid-1960's to maintain the 5-way distinction for 2-mora nouns which is documented in the Ruijuumyougisho, a dictionary compiled in 1081. As described in Wada(1966b) not only does a 5-way distinction exist, but there is also a difference in the manifestation of the pitches between different age groups. The dissertation reconfirms Wada's observations concerning the 5-way distinction for 2-mora nouns using a statistical approach, discriminant analysis. Further, it is demonstrated that for the 3-mora nouns, there are only 5 valid accent classes although some scholars (Uwano and Sato) have claimed that up to seven exist. Using the model for Japanese pitch-accent proposed in Pierrehumbert & Beckman (1988) sequences of the 3-mora nouns are analyzed to determine the degree and manner that 'catathesis' applies in the dialect. We conclude that catathesis most likely does apply, but unlike Osaka, focus, does not cause a lowering of the Fo for words that start Low. In emulation of Pierrehumbert & Beckman, the dissertation presents an algorithm for generating pitch contours for Ibuki accent classes using a set of parameters including declination, maximum and minimum Fe levels, accent peeks as a percentage of available pitch range, focus increment, and catathesis. To demonstrate the validity of the algorithm, a computer program, IBUGEN, is used to produce contours which are matched with pitch extractions of actual utterances. The program is available as 'ibugen.tar.z' over Internet by anonymous ftp from ftp.Hawaii.edu.