Phonetic realization of second occurrence focus in Japanese

Previous studies have recently agreed that second occurrence focus is phonetically realized as prosodic prominence. What has been missing in the previous studies, however, is a comparison with neutral-focus, in addition to main focus and pre/postfocus, which is necessary to elucidate a precise phonetic status of second occurrence focus. Using evidence from Japanese, this study shows that second occurrence focus in the pre/post-focus position is realized with high pitch less salient than main focus but more than pre/post-focus. Compared with neutral-focus, the pitch of second occurrence focus is higher in the pre-focus position but lower in the post-focus position due to post-focus compression. Furthermore, this study provides a cross-linguistic insight of focus realization. The result suggests that Japanese focus experiences pre-focus compression, in addition to postfocus compression, which is different from Korean, English, and Mandarin.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: INTERSPEECH
• Authors: Satoshi Nambu, Yong-cheol Lee
• Keywords: INTERSPEECH 2010, Main Focus, Occurrence Focus, Precise Phonetic Status, Signal Processing