Journal of Neurolinguistics 27 (2014) 31–40

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Neurolinguistics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jneuroling

Is pitch accent necessary for comprehension
by native Japanese speakers? – An ERP
investigation
Katsuo Tamaoka a, *, Nobuhiro Saito b, Sachiko Kiyama c,
Kalinka Timmer d, Rinus G. Verdonschot aaGraduate School of Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya-shi,
Aichi-ken 464-8601, Japanb
Kyushu University, Japanc
National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Japand
Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, the Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 26 May 2013
Received in revised form 28 July 2013
Accepted 8 August 2013

Not unlike the tonal system in Chinese, Japanese habitually attaches pitch accents to the production of words. However, incontrast to Chinese, few homophonic word-pairs are reallydistinguished by pitch accents (Shibata & Shibata, 1990). Thispredicts that pitch accent plays a small role in lexical selection forJapanese language comprehension. The present study investigatedwhether native Japanese speakers necessarily use pitch accent in
the processing of accent-contrasted homophonic pairs (e.g., ame[LH] for ‘candy’ and ame [HL] for ‘rain’) measuring electroencephalographic (EEG) potentials. Electrophysiological evidence(i.e., N400) was obtained when a word was semantically incorrect
for a given context but not for incorrectly accented homophones.
This suggests that pitch accent indeed plays a minor role when
understanding Japanese.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Pitch accent
Accentual opposition
Homophone
ERP
N400
Japanese

1. Introduction
Pitch accent, used in Japanese and Chinese, involves the relative prominence of pitch in a syllable ormora of a word. According to Shibata and Shibata (1990), about 14% of Japanese homophones are* Corresponding author. Tel./Fax: þ81 052 789 4335.
E-mail addresses: ktamaoka@lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp, ktamaoka@gc4.so-net.ne.jp (K. Tamaoka).
0911-6044/$ – see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2013.08.001

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K. Tamaoka et al. / Journal of Neurolinguistics 27 (2014) 31–40

distinguished by pitch accent while this number is 71% in Chinese for tone (a distinct type of pitchaccent). Given this great discrepancy in percentages, they suggested that tone in Chinese is used for
distinguishing homophones while pitch in Japanese is not. Likewise, Kitahara (2006) pointed out that,in Japanese, homophonic minimal pairs (e.g., ame [Low (L) – High (H)] for ‘candy’ and ame [HL] for‘rain’) include words that usually differ in frequency (i.e., one is much more frequent). Once frequencydivergent homophone pairs are excluded, the number of homophones which are strictly distinguishedby pitch falls below 10% which corroborates the minor role of pitch accent in distinguishing homophone pairs (as proposed by Shibata & Shibata, 1990).
An electrophysiological component often used in the study of language is the N400. The N400 is acentro-parietal relative negativity peaking around 400 ms after stimulus onset (see: Kutas &Federmeier, 2011). The component in itself does not need to be negative; rather, the comparison between experimental conditions such as in the semantic violation: ‘He spread the warm bread withsocks.’ versus its control ‘He spread the warm bread with butter’ (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980) tends to elicit
a relative negative amplitude for the incongruent condition (coined the “N400-effect”). This effect has
been observed for a wide range of word processing studies investigating differences in word frequency(van Petten & Kutas, 1990), word neighborhood size (Holcomb, Grainger, & O’Rourke, 2002), and cloze
probability (Kutas & Hillyard, 1980, 1984). It has been suggested that the N400 is sensitive to therelative ease with which the meaning of a word is integrated into the surrounding context.
Results of N400 elicitation were reported in studies on the role of tone accent in (Beijing) Mandarin
Chinese (Li, Yang, & Hagoort, 2008; Schirmer, Tang, Penney, Gunter, & Chen, 2005; Xi, Zhang, Shu,
Zhang, & Li, 2010; Zhao, Guo, Zhou, & Shu, 2011) showing that a tone violation in monosyllabic or
disyllabic homophones (e.g., 花/hua1/‘ﬂower’ instead of画/hua4/‘painting’) elicited an N400 during
spoken language comprehension. In the case of Chinese, the N400 therefore indicated that when an
incorrectly accented word was embedded in a context indeed the erroneous lexical item had been
selected from the mental lexicon. Similarly, in Japanese, Hayashi et al. (2001) found an N400 elicitation
for pitch violations. This study used a question and answer correspondence task. Participants ﬁrst were
given a question such as: ‘What color is the trafﬁc light indicating stop?’ Subsequently, one of three
answers was presented: (1) a correctly-accented condition:/aka/(HL) meaning ‘It is red.’, (2) an
incorrectly-accented homophone:/aka/(LH) meaning ‘It is dirt.’, and (3) a one-phoneme-changed
semantically-mismatched word:/ama/(HL) meaning ‘It is a nun.’ However, it has been shown that
contextual predictability also elicits an N400 (e.g., van Berkum, Brown, Zwitserlood & Kooijman &Hagoort, 2005; Delong, Urbach, & Kutas, 2005; Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, & Petersson, 2004). For
instance, Dutch trains are painted ‘yellow’, not ‘white’. This predictability from world knowledge elicits
an N400 in language comprehension when the target word ‘white’ deviates from the well-known factthat trains are ‘yellow’ (Hagoort et al., 2004). A ‘red’ trafﬁc signal indicating stop is commonly-used allover the world. Thus, after presentation of the question, participants may have easily anticipated theupcoming word in this particular paradigm. It is possible that the N400 elicitation was caused by
predictability arising from world knowledge, rather than a pitch accent violation.
Similarly, an N400 was found on pitch accent violation of verbs (Koso & Hagiwara, 2009; Koso,
Ojima, & Hagiwara, 2011). Japanese is a head-ﬁnal language (head referring to a verb), in which averb is positioned at the end of the sentence. Various studies (e.g., Kamide, Altmann, & Haywood, 2003;
Kamide & Mitchell, 1999) have indicated that, for processing sentences of such languages, speakers areable to incrementally construct syntactic structure prior to seeing the head verb. This is called pre-headanticipation processing. However, Koso and colleagues (Koso & Hagiwara, 2009; Koso et al., 2011)
mainly used highly-predictable verbs (e.g., LHL-pitch tabe-ru for present tense ‘eat’, and HLL-pitchtabe-ta for past tense ‘ate’). As such, prediction from sentential context could again have elicited an
N400 (e.g., van Berkum et al., 2005). In addition, pitch accent for verb tense also follows rule-based
regularities, rather than being an individual lexical property; therefore an N400 might also be
caused by accent regularity on verb tense.
The current study would therefore like to substantiate and extend the earlier N400 ﬁndings obtained in Japanese. To do this we employed electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate whether
native Japanese speakers necessarily activate pitch accent when accessing the concept of a lexical itemin the processing of accent-contrasted homophonic pairs by embedding these words in simple sentences which are less susceptible to the possible alternative interpretations mentioned earlier. We also

K. Tamaoka et al. / Journal of Neurolinguistics 27 (2014) 31–40

33included a non-homophonic semantic deviation to make sure that any absence of a N400-effect forincorrectly accented target words was not due to experimental factors.
To summarize, we expect an N400-effect for semantically incongruent words compared tocorrectly-accented words. Additionally, if Japanese speakers unequivocally process pitch accent whenaccessing meaning, we also expect an N400 effect for incorrectly-accented targets in context sentences(compared to correctly-accented words). However, if Japanese speakers do not use pitch accent forcomprehension we hypothesize that the N400-effect will be absent.
2. Methods
2.1. Participants
Nineteen right-handed native Japanese speakers (8 female; mean age: 20.2 years, SD ¼ 1.5) living in
Aichi Prefecture (central part of Japan; classiﬁed as part of the Tokyo standard dialect region; Daijirin,2013), participated in the experiment. All participants were university students at Nagoya University,and familiar with Tokyo standard pitch accent according to a questionnaire given prior to the experiment. No participant reported any neurological problems. Informed consent was obtained before theexperiment.
3. Materials
Twenty-four matched words having the same sounds but different accents were embedded in thesame sentence across three conditions. For example, as shown in Fig. 1, the ﬁrst condition was asentence with a correctly-accented target word in the Tokyo-standard accent such as: Kinyuu kiki-de
yooroppa zentai-no tsuuka-ga geraku shita ‘Due to the ﬁnancial crisis, currency dropped throughout
Europe’. In this condition, the underlined word tsuuka-ga [HLL-L] ‘currency’ was used as the correctlyaccented target word.
To ascertain that the stimuli for the ﬁrst condition were not particularly predictable (compared to
Hayashi et al., 2001; Koso et al., 2011), we conducted a pilot paper-and-pencil prediction test for all 48
sentences. We tested 41 native Japanese university students (31 males; average age: 20 years, SD ¼ 0.6;
not included in EEG experiment). For example, a sentence with a bracket for a target word Watashi-wa
toshokan-de ( )-o yomuno-ga sukida, meaning ‘I like to read ( ) at the library’ was presented to students.
The target word of this sentence is ‘a biography’. If a student ﬁlled in this word, it was counted as 1. The
results revealed a low average predictability rate of 22.8% which discounts a great role for predictability
regarding the stimuli used in the EEG experiment.
The second condition was the same sentence containing an incorrectly-accented target word thatwas minimally similar, yet had a different accent and if accent is lexically distinctive thus has a different
meaning. In the case of the homophone target pair, tsuuka-ga [HLL-L] ‘currency’ would be changed totsuuka-ga [LHH-H] ‘passage’ or ‘transit’, resulting in a sentence indicating: ‘Due to the ﬁnancial crisis,passage dropped throughout Europe’. The sound of the entire sentence is exactly the same as in theﬁrst condition except the accent of tsuuka-ga [LHH-H] ‘passage’. The tsuuka-ga homophone pairs can bealtered to the correct/incorrect accents to create congruent/incongruent sentence meanings. In thispair-matching approach, 24 paired target words were used to create 48 paired sentences. The third
condition was the same sentence with a semantically-incompatible word, such as huton-ga ‘futon’,which contains the same number of morae (3) as tsuuka-ga ‘currency’ and ‘passage’.
The underlined words in the example pair of Japanese sentences were the targets or “trigger”
words, for which sound initiation was time-locked to the event-related potentials (ERPs) calculated insubsequent analyses. Since the 24 pairs of correctly and incorrectly accented homophones werereversed in correct and incorrect accents in sentences, these 48 sentences had identical word frequency (M ¼ 10.4). Semantically incorrect words matched with these paired words had an averageword frequency of 10.5. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on word frequencies
across three conditions, indicating no main effect [F < 1]. The same ANOVA was conducted using anatural logarithm transformation from raw word frequencies (see Baayen, Feldman, & Schreuder,
2006; M ¼ 7.7 for the paired conditions and M ¼ 8.3 for the control condition). Sixteen sentences (834

K. Tamaoka et al. / Journal of Neurolinguistics 27 (2014) 31–40

Fig. 1. Example for the three stimulus conditions.

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35

correct, 8 incorrect; not included in experiment proper) were created to serve as practice sentences
before the experiment started. The result also showed no main effect [F(2, 141) ¼ 1.88, p ¼ .16].
All sentences were recorded by Nobuhiro Saito (born in the Kanto area, Tokyo standard dialect
speaker) a specialist in Japanese pitch accent patterns (see Saito & Uchibori, 2003) and are available at
http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/wktamaoka/.
The sound durations of whole sentences across the three conditions were controlled to be equal,with a mean duration of 3.08 s for correctly-accented sentences, 3.09 s for incorrectly-accented sentences, and 3.12 s for sentences with control words. A one-way ANOVA revealed no signiﬁcant differences between sentence sound durations [F < 1]. In addition, the sound durations of target trigger
words across the three conditions were also controlled. The means were 1.58 s for correctly-accented
sentences, 1.58 s for incorrectly-accented sentences, and 1.60 s for control sentences. A one-way
ANOVA revealed no main effect of duration [F < 1].
In addition to the 144 sentences (48 sentences  3 conditions) used for analysis, 46 ﬁller sentenceswere added to divert attention from the experimental manipulation, totaling 48 target sentences  2pairs þ 48 semantically-incorrect sentences þ 48 ﬁller sentences ¼ 192 sentences. Examples of ﬁller
sentences are Aki-ni Naruto-wa sanma-ga oisii desu-ne ‘In autumn, pike is tasty’ and Seishikina syoruiwa tegaki-de kaitekudasai ‘Please write an ofﬁcial document by hand’. The total of 192 sentences waspresented pseudo-randomly to each participant (pseudo means that the same sentences could not
follow each other).
4. Procedure
Participants were tested individually in a sound attenuated room and gave informed consent
before the experiment started. First of all, EEG measurements were acquired on 32 scalp sites byattaching tin electrodes mounted in an electrode cap off-line referenced to the left and rightmastoids. Using BioSemi Actiview continuous EEG sampling was performed at 512 Hz. Eye-blinks
were measured with one electrode placed above and another underneath the left eye. Eyemovements were measured with two electrodes, one on the external canthi of each eye. We
used E-prime 2.0 for stimulus presentation as well as putting marker data into the continuous EEG
signal. Before the experiment proper started participants were given 16 practice trials to familiarize
themselves with the experiment. The experiment consisted of three blocks with a small break
between each block.
5. Design
A trial started with 1500 ms of ﬁxation followed by an auditorily presented sentence. The ERPs
were time-locked to the initiation of the critical target word embedded in the auditorily presented
sentence. Since it is possible to perform the task by detecting an incorrectly-accented word before
listening to the entire sentence, responses were to be made when a ‘?’ was displayed which was 1 s
after the sentence ended. Only accuracy but not reaction times were analyzed due to this delay inthe response task.
6. Results
6.1. Accuracy data
Judgment accuracy was 97.0% for correctly rejecting sentences with semantically-incompatible
words, 92.5% for correctly accepting sentences with correctly-accented words, and 87.7% forcorrectly rejecting sentences with incorrectly-accented words. An LME (linear mixed effect) model
analysis showed a signiﬁcant main effect [F(2, 4128) ¼ 37.22, p < .001]. Multiple comparisons showedthat the incorrect pitch accent condition was more difﬁcult than the other two conditions. Although,native Japanese speakers showed very high accuracy rates across the three conditions, they made moreerrors rejecting incorrectly-accented words.

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6.2. ERP data
The EEG data were corrected for eye-blink artifacts using the Gratton, Coles, and Donchin (1983)
algorithm. Ocular and non-ocular artifacts were removed from further analyses. Filters (high-pass:
0.01 Hz/24 dB and low-pass: 40 Hz/24 dB) were applied. Epochs of 800 ms were computed with a
200 ms pre-stimulus baseline. Trials with artifacts were removed from the analysis (5.2% of the data).
These artifacts were equally distributed over the conditions. The mean amplitudes of the remaining
ERP trials was on average 46 (SD ¼ 3.6) and were submitted to a repeated-measures ANOVA with
Condition (correct-accent, incorrect-accent, and semantically-incongruent) and Localization (frontal:
AF3, AF4, F3, F4, F7, F8, Fz versus central: C3, C4, Cz, FC1, FC2, CP1, CP2 versus posterior: P3, P4, P7, P8,
PO3, PO4, Pz) as the independent factors. Time window selection was based on visual inspection: 100–
200 ms and 250–700 ms (N400).
100–200 ms. There was neither a main effect of Condition [F(2,36) ¼ 1.88, MSe ¼ 28.16, ns] nor aninteraction with Localization [F < 1].
250–700 ms. There was a main effect of Condition [F(2,36) ¼ 11.50, MSe ¼ 58.66, p < .001] whichinteracted with Localization [F(4,72) ¼ 5.12, MSe ¼ 5.19, p < .005]. Separate analyses for each brain region
revealed a main effect of condition throughout all brain regions [frontal: F(2,36) ¼ 3.68, MSe ¼ 26.45,
p < .05; central: F(2,36) ¼ 13.96, MSe ¼ 23.03, p < .001; posterior: F(2,36) ¼ 16.96, MSe ¼ 17.40, p < .001].
Planned comparisons demonstrated that the N400 revealed more negative amplitudes for thesemantically-incompatible condition compared to both the correct-pitch accented condition [frontal:
F(1,18) ¼ 3.68, MSe ¼ 36.16, p < .05; central: F(1,18) ¼ 13.96, MSe ¼ 42.31, p < .005; posterior:
F(1,18) ¼ 16.96, MSe ¼ 32.20, p < .001] and the incorrect-pitch accented condition [frontal: F(1,18) ¼ 4.50,
MSe ¼ 63.41, p < .05; central: F(1,18) ¼ 19.72, MSe ¼ 53.25, p < .001; posterior: F(1,18) ¼ 22.91,
MSe ¼ 39.37, p < .001]. However, importantly, the incorrectly-accented words did not differ from thecorrectly accented words [frontal and central: F < 1; posterior: F(1,18) ¼ 1.40, MSe ¼ 19.54, ns]. The resultthat pitch accent deviation in Japanese did not produce an N400, as the correctly accented but
semantically incongruent condition did, indicates that pitch-accent is not a critical factor in Japanese
sentence comprehension (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Averaged stimulus-locked ERP waveforms for the conditions of pitch accent in Japanese spoken sentence comprehension.

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37

7. Discussion
The present study did not ﬁnd electrophysiological evidence (i.e., N400) for the involvement ofpitch accent when processing incorrectly accented words during sentence comprehension. Thisabsence is not the result of experimental attributes as semantically incongruent items did elicit the
expected N400. Rather it is the result of retrieval of the correct item from the mental lexicon (although
the word was incorrectly accented) for embedding in the sentence.
The absence of an N400 for incorrectly-accented items compared to correctly-accented items
supports the claim made by Shibata and Shibata (1990) that Japanese pitch accents have little
function in homophone distinction (opposite to Chinese where tone plays a crucial role). However,
although the present study indicates that pitch accent in Japanese plays a minor role in lexical
selection, previous studies (Hayashi et al., 2001; Koso & Hagiwara, 2009; Koso et al., 2011) did ﬁnd
neuro-correlational evidence for the distinguishing function of pitch accent. Hayashi et al. (2001)
found an N400 elicitation between both pitch violation and phonemic violation in the processingof Japanese sentences. This result indicates that native speakers may still be using pitch accent toaccess the meaning of a homophone. However, as stated before, the N400 is confounded with high/low-predictability (Hagoort et al., 2004). Therefore, it is difﬁcult to distinguish whether the N400
found by Hayashi et al. (2001) resulted from a violation of pitch accent or from the use of world
knowledge to predict the response. It might be worthwhile to adapt the paradigm used in Hayashi’s
study (as well as the Koso & Hagiwara, 2009 and Koso et al., 2011 studies) by including less predictable stimuli to assess whether the N400 could still be obtained when anticipation plays a lessprominent role.
It is important to note that in Japan, regional differences in pitch accent are abundant (e.g.,
Kindaichi, 1974; Kubozono & Ota, 1998; Sugito, 1982, 2012). Accents in the Osaka region often show
pitch reversal compared to Tokyo-standard accent, such as the 4-mora utterance boosi-ga ‘a hat’,
which is LHHH in Tokyo versus HLLL in Osaka. Sato (1999) reported that native Japanese speakers
living in non-Tokyo-standard accent regions can comprehend Tokyo-standard accent sufﬁciently
well to communicate with those from the region where Tokyo-standard dialect is spoken.
Conversely, people from Tokyo standard dialect regions, having little knowledge of dialectic accents, can readily process the meanings from words with different accents from semantic context.
In addition, there are even some dialects scattered throughout Japan which do not feature pithaccent, such as in Miyagi, Yamagata, and Fukushima prefectures (Daijirin, 2013). Speakers ofthese dialects can understand pitch-accent dialects spoken in other regions from Japan, unless theyuse completely different dialect-speciﬁc lexical items. As Japanese pitch accents diverge (or areabsent) in different regional dialects of Japanese, pitch accent may not be a very reliable cue forlexical access during spoken word recognition. In summary, the present study indicated that Japanese pitch accent plays a minor role in lexical access during language comprehension. This result
is consistent with existing calculations showing a low-ratio for accentual oppositions among homophones in Japanese (Shibata & Shibata, 1990). Japanese is therefore different from Chinese, inwhich the proportion for which homophones can only be distinguished in tone is much greater. We
therefore conclude that the processing of pitch accent in Japanese and Chinese differ as a result of
the number of accentual oppositions in each language.
Appendix. A. Examples of experimental target stimuli
1-1 Correctly-accented, ju u da i ‘important’ LHHH
この国会で税金を上げるかどうかは重大だ。
Kono kokkaide zeikin-o ageruka doo-ka wa juudai da.
It is serious whether a tax is raised in this parliament.
1-2 Incorrectly-accented ju u da i ‘teens’ HLLL, but sounded LHHH
この国会で税金を上げるかどうかは十代だ。
Kono kokkaide zeikin-o ageruka doo-ka wa juudai da.
It is teens whether a tax is raised in this parliament.

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1-3 Semantically-incorrect ju u de n ‘charge’ LHHH
この国会で税金を上げるかどうかは充電だ。
Kono kokkaide zeikin-o ageruka doo-ka wa juuden da.
It is charge whether a tax is raised in this parliament.
2-1 Correctly-accented, de n ki ‘biography’ LHH
私は図書館で伝記を読むのが好きです。
Watashi-wa toshokan-de denki-o yomunoga sukidesu.
I like reading biographies in the library.
2-2 Incorrectly-accented de n ki ‘light’ HLL, but sounded LHH
私は図書館で電気を読むのが好きです。
Watashi-wa toshokan-de denki-o yomunoga sukidesu.
I like reading the light in the library.
2-3 Semantically-incorrect ta ta mi ‘Tatami (Japanese traditional carpet)’ LHH
私は図書館で畳を読むのが好きです。
Watashi-wa toshokan-de tatami-o yomunoga sukidesu.
I like reading the tatami in the library.
3-1 Correctly-accented, bu do o ‘grape’ LHH
こんなに甘くておいしいブドウは初めてです。
Konnani amakute oishii budoo-wa hajimete desu.
I ate the grape which is so sweet and delicious for the ﬁrst time.
3-2 Incorrectly-accented bu do o ‘the martial arts’ HLL, but sounded LHH
こんなに甘くておいしい武道は初めてです。
Konnani amakute oishii budoo-wa hajimete desu.
I ate the martial arts which is so sweet and delicious for the ﬁrst time.
3-3 Semantically-incorrect ko to shi ‘this year’ LHH
こんなに甘くておいしい今年は初めてです。
Konnani amakute oishii kotoshi-wa hajimete desu.
I ate this year which is so sweet and delicious for the ﬁrst time.
4-1 Correctly-accented, ta i yo o ‘sun’ HLLL
東の空から少しずつ太陽が出てきた。
Higashi no sora-kara sukoshizutsu taiyoo-ga detekita.
The sun came out of the east sky little by little.
4-2 Incorrectly-accented ta i yo o ‘ocean’ LHHH, but sounded HLLL
東の空から少しずつ大洋が出てきた。
Higashi no sora-kara sukoshizutsu taiyoo-ga detekita.
The ocean came out of the east sky little by little.
4-3 Semantically-incorrect ho n da na ‘bookshelf’ HLLL
東の空から少しずつ本棚が出てきた。
Higashi no sora-kara sukoshizutsu hondana-ga detekita.
The bookshelf came out of the east sky little by little.
5-1 Correctly-accented, ka n ji ‘Chinese character’ LHH
中国で発明された漢字は日本にも伝わった。
Cyuugoku-de hatsumei sareta kanji-wa nihon-nimo tsutawatta.
The Chinese character invented in China reached Japan.

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5-2 Incorrectly-accented ka n ji ‘secretary’ HLL, but sounded LHH
中国で発明された幹事は日本にも伝わった。
Cyuugoku-de hatsumei sareta kanji-wa nihon-nimo tsutawatta.
The secretary invented in China reached Japan.
5-3 Semantically-incorrect ta nu ki ‘raccoon dog’ HLL
中国で発明されたタヌキは日本にも伝わった。
Cyuugoku-de hatsumei sareta tanuki-wa nihon-nimo tsutawatta.
The raccoon dog invented in China reached Japan.
6-1 Correctly-accented, i shi ‘stone’ LH
この庭にはたくさんの石が置いてある。
Kono niwa-niwa takusan no ishi-ga oite aru.
Many stones are put in this garden.
6-2 Incorrectly-accented i shi ‘will’ HL, but sounded LH
この 庭にはたくさんの意志が置いてある。
Kono niwa-niwa takusan no ishi-ga oite aru.
Many wills are put in this garden.
6-3 Semantically-incorrect u ta ‘song’ LH
この庭にはたくさんの歌が置いてある。
Kono niwa-niwa takusan no uta-ga oite aru.
Many songs are put in this garden.
7-1 Correctly-accented, ka ki ‘persimmon’ LH
昔、裏山の寺で柿を取って食べました。
Mukashi urayama no tera-de kaki-o totte tabemasita.
I took the persimmon in the temple of the distant mountain and ate it in old days.
7-2 Incorrectly-accented ka ki ‘oyster’ HL, but sounded LH
昔、裏山の寺で牡蠣を取って食べました。
Mukashi urayama no tera-de kaki-o totte tabemashita.
I took the oyster in the temple of the distant mountain and ate it in old days.
7-3 Semantically-incorrect i ki ‘breath’ HL
昔、裏山の寺で息を取って食べました。
Mukashi urayama no tera-de iki-o totte tabemashita.
I took the breath in the temple of the distant mountain and ate it in old days.
8-1 Correctly-accented, ka n sa i ‘west area in Japan’ HLLL
私は中学生まで、関西に住んでいました。
Watashi-wa cyuugaku-made kansai-ni sunde imashita.
I lived in Kansai until junior high.
8-2 Incorrectly-accented ka n sa i ‘pay in full’ LHHH, but sounded HLLL
私は中学生まで、完済に住んでいました。
Watashi-wa cyuugaku-made kansai-ni sunde imashita.
I lived in pay in full until junior high.
8-3 Semantically-incorrect te n sa i ‘genius’ LHHH
私は中学生まで、天才に住んでいました。
Watashi-wa cyuugaku-made tensai-ni sunde imashita.
I lived in genius until junior high.

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