Basic Research on the Phonetic Status of Vowel Devoicing and Accent in Metropolitan Dialect

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The language spoken in Tokyo and neighboring area can be defined as Metropolitan dialect. This research aims to describe the Metropolitan dialect which is not yet fully described, while it is generally accepted as standard Japanese.In this occasion, the focus of the research was put on the devoicing of vowels and accent. Vowel devoicing is not phonemic element in Japanese, but it is known as important phonetic characteristic of standard Japanese. The basic condition of vowel devoicing is made clear already, but actual state has been left unknown.Surveys were made on Taketomi dialect in Okinawa, Morioka dialect in Iwate, and Nishiwaki dialect in Hyogo. Field work researches were carried out using over 700 items, which brought following results.1.In the Metropolitan dialect, the degree of vowel devoicing varies depending on the informant. There are hardly any informants who devoice the vowel of the word ‘sushi'.2.Vowel devoicing affects the position of accent cores. It was made clear that in the case of the word pair ‘fuku' (blow) and ‘fuku' (wipe), vowel devoicing does not affect the accent core, but in the pair ‘cuku' (arrive) and ‘cuku' (spear), the accent core moves and many informants pronounce them identically.3.The degree of devoicing on low vowels between voiceless consonants are reported to decrease, but in the young devoicing of low vowels were observed in the words such as ‘yamanotesen'.4.The relationship between vowel devoicing and syllabic non-nasal consonants is obscure. Distinction between the word pair such as ‘nisshimbashi' and ‘nishishimbashi' is not clear and need more study.Researches are being done from the viewpoint of acoustic phonetics, but it is also necessary to study many informants using many research items as this research.