An Acoustic Phonetic Comparative Analysis of Osaka and Kagoshima Japanese Tonal Phenomena

This paper, first of all, demonstrates that the LHL and the L(L)H pitch patterns exhibit significantly different F0 realisations between Osaka Japanese (OJ) and Kagoshima Japanese (KJ) which typologically belong to different accent groups. Secondly, it is argued that the observed difference results from the phonological differences between OJ and KJ in terms of their tonal representations. Finally, some implications of the observed difference to the tonal representations of KJ are discussed. This study is based on the acoustic-phonetic descriptions of the LHL and the L(L)H pitch patterns using a normalisation technique based on 12 OJ and 14 KJ speakers.