Doctoral Dissertation Research: Category Structure of Pitch Accent in the Mid-Western Japanese Dialects

音高是音乐中用于区分音符的资源，也是不同语言的声音系统中普遍存在的一个方面。语言使用音调来实现许多功能，从标记短语和形成疑问句，到区分单词，就像英语一样。本研究考察了日语六种方言中的基音重音系统，这些方言严重依赖基音对比来识别和区分单词。这些方言以一种特别复杂的音调用法而闻名，这种用法被称为“Shiki”。Shiki被不同地描述为单词开头的局部音调规范，以及整个单词中音高的更全局运动。由于目前大多数声音的语音表示依赖于代表局部声音的元素，因此Shiki的动态和全局方面对典型的表示方案提出了某种挑战。这项研究将确定不同方言中志怪的性质对比，这些方言展示了不同的志怪清单。日本中部方言的另一个方面是，它们表现出许多不同的志气和口音系统，形成了一个自然的类型学样本，可以通过不同的方式区分志气和口音类型，以标记不同的单词。这项研究首先收集了分布在日本中部内陆水道的六种不同类型的志贵口音的录音。然后，这些录音被提交给声学分析，并建立了音调控制的时间过程的动态模型。这些模型将复杂的移动模式简化为一组参数，可以检查它们如何捕捉不同方言中的单词对比。它还将包括感知部分，其中这些模型参数被用来创建合成语音，以便说话者在以后的实地工作阶段对这些方言进行感知评估。因此，我们的目标是确定说话者在语音产生中控制并在语音感知中注意的基频F0的那些特征。这些发现将为语言系统如何跨语言使用音高和音高系统的类型学提供信息。这项研究还将有助于我们理解说话者如何在不同的口音中保持不同的志气系统，因为有如此多不同和复杂的系统分布在相对较小的地理区域。此外，这项研究有望为音调控制的性质以及它应该如何在音调使用研究中表现出来开辟新的概念。这不仅适用于日语等语言的词语对比研究，也适用于英语等语言的语调研究。也许最重要的是，这项研究服务于记录几种濒临灭绝的日语方言的有价值的目的。例如，位于日本内海一个小岛上的Ibukijima方言是已知的唯一一种保持与为古日语重建的系统相同类型的方言。然而，说地道的Ibukijima方言的人数量很少，而且超过70岁。这项研究将记录该方言在这一遗产永远消失之前的言语。

Pitch is the resource used to distinguish notes in music, and it is also a ubiquitous aspect of the sound system of different languages. Languages use pitch for numerous functions, from marking off phrases and forming questions, as in English, to differentiating words. This study investigates pitch accent systems in six dialects of Japanese, which are known to rely heavily on pitch contrasts for the identification and differentiation of words. These dialects are notable for a particularly complex use of vocal pitch, called "shiki". Shiki have been described variously as local pitch specifications at the beginning of a word, and as a more global movement of pitch throughout a word. Since most current phonological representations of sounds rely on elements that represent sound locally, the dynamic and global aspects of shiki present something of a challenge to typical representational schemes. This research will determine the nature of shiki contrasts in different dialects that are known to exhibit different inventories of shiki. One other aspect of the dialects of central Japan is that they exhibit many different shiki and accent systems, forming a natural typological sample of the different ways in which shiki and accent types can be differentiated to mark different words. The study begins with the collection of recordings of different shiki-accent types in six different varieties scattered about the inland waterways of central Japan. These recordings are then submitted to acoustic analysis, with the construction of dynamic models of the time-course of pitch control. These models reduce the complex movement patterns to a set of parameters that can be examined for how they capture the word contrasts in the different dialects. It will also include a perceptual component in which these model parameters are used to create synthetic speech for perceptual evaluation by speakers of these dialects in a later field-work stage. The goal, then, is to determine those characteristics of the fundamental frequency F0 that speakers control in speech production and pay attention to in speech perception. The findings will inform the question of how linguistic systems use pitch and the typology of pitch systems cross-linguistically. The study will also contribute to our understanding of how speakers can maintain distinct shiki systems in different accents, since there are so many different and complex systems distributed over a relatively small geographic area. In addition, this research holds promise to open up new conceptualizations of the nature of pitch control, and how it should be represented in studies of pitch usage. This is relevant not only for studies of word contrasts in languages such as Japanese, but also intonational studies of languages such as English. Perhaps most importantly though, the study serves the valuable purpose of documenting several endangered dialects of Japanese. For example, the Ibukijima dialect, localized on a small island in the inland sea of Japan, is the only known dialect that maintains the same type of system as reconstructed for Old Japanese. However, the speakers of an authentic Ibukijima dialect are few in number and over seventy years of age. This study will document the speech of the dialect before this heritage is gone forever.