Investigation of Validity of Paradigmatic
Diagnosis for Downstep in Japanese
Kei Furukawa and Satoshi Nakamura
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)Part of this work was supported by JST SPRING Grant Number JPMJSP2140 andJSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP21H05054
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Take-home messages• (1) Traditional diagnosis of downstep in Japanese has twoconfounding factors• Spill-over effect of accents• Phonological phrasing• (2) This research proposes a new diagnostic approach controlling thetwo confounding factors.
• (3) This research provides evidence that downstep is caused not byaccents but by phonological boundaries.

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Accented vs. unaccented words
Unaccented (U)＝no sharp F0 fallane”sister”
LHunagi ”eel”
LHH

%LHH
Low-high-highAccented (A)＝H*L = F0 fallani“brother”
H*L

memai

“dizziness”
LH*L%LH*L
Low-high-low
3downstep
2.67412097
2.89824769

150

AAUA

140

Pitch (Hz)120

Downstep
100

Trigger80
Unaccented＋Accented

60

a ne no wa’

Accented＋Accented

ina’ ni no wa’

0in
4.029

Time (s)TriggerDownstep
Unaccented (U)ane-no”sister”-GEN+ Accented (A)Accented (A) + Accented (A)Downstepmemai“dizziness”

ani-no“brother”=GENRegion 1

Region 2

Region 1

memai“dizziness”

Region 2• Why is a step-like pitch downtrend observed only after accents?
• Downstep: pitch range compression triggered by accents(McCawley, 1968; Poser, 1984; Kubozono, 1993; Shinya, 1999; Itoand Mester, 2013; Ishihara, 2016)
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What triggers downstep?
Accents

Accent-driven accountDownstep= Large F0 step-likedowntrend• The assumption: downstep is triggered
only by accents.
• Previous studies and experiments havebeen based on this assumption (McCawley, 1968;
Poser, 1984; Kubozono, 1993; Shinya, 1999; Ito and Mester, 2013;
Ishihara, 2016)• no accents, no step-like downtrends

Observablephenomena
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Boundary-driven downstep (Furukawa & Hirose 2019)

(LHH

HHHH

Ane-no unagi-no omise"Sister's eel restaurant"

HHH)

BDDBDD

(LHH)

(LHH)

Phonologicalyamame-ya namazuboundary Unagi-ya“Eel, trout, and catfish”(LHH)

No accents
à no step-like downtrends

If boundaries àdownstep-ish downtrend
Boundary-driven downstep(BDD)

Furukawa & Hirose (2019)

What triggers downstep?
Accents

Accent-driven account

Boundary-driven account(Furukawa & Hirose 2019)(Ito & Mester, 2013)
Boundary-driven
downstep
Insertion of phonological• Accent culminativity• Anti-lapse constraintboundaries

Parallel structure
A and B and C

require evidence
contradicting theaccent-driven accountDownstep= Large F0 step-like
downtrend

Unaccented downstep= Small F0 step-like
downtrendObservablephenomena
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Paradigmatic diagnosis of downstep
Region 1200

• If F0 peak of X in AX << X in UX,• Two confounding factors• (1) Spill-over effect of accents• (2) Phonological phrasing

Region 1.27168672
2 1.31760149

150

Peak of X

Pitch (Hz)• X in UX: no downstep• X in AX: downstep

Region 1

Peak of X• Then X in AX is diagnosed as downstepped• Assumption: the F0 peak difference issolely due to downstep

Region 210075

Unaccented＋Accented

Accented＋Accented

aa’neyamema’ iniyamema’0i
1.399

Time (s)9Confounding factor 1: spill-over effect of accents
Region 1

Region 2

Region 1

Region 2

1.27168672
1.31760149

200• Assumption of paradigmatic diagnosis:• However, F0 is already lowered before Xof AX• X may be lowered by an accent before theeffect of downstep

Peak of X
150

Peak of X

Pitch (Hz)• The F0 peak difference is solely due todownstep• X in UX: no downstep• X in AX: downstep

100

Unaccented＋Accented

75a0neAccented＋Accented

me ma’
ia’F0ni
Alreadyloweredby the accent
before TimeX (s)yayamema’i
1.399

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Confounding factor 1: spill-over effect of accents
Region 1• The proper measurement must be thedifferences between the AX and UX
conditions that only develop after
entering the X• UX(non-downstep condition) should
show larger F0 rise at Region 2 thanAX(downstep condition)

Region 2

1.27168672
1.31760149

200

Peak of X
150

Peak of X

100

Accented＋Accented

Unaccented＋Accented

75a• since AX is under the effect of downstep• This prediction is also valid under
Pierrehumbert and Beckman’s model

Region 1Pitch (Hz)• F0 rise at Region 2Region 2neyame

ma’ ia’niya

me

ma’0i
1.399

Time (s)11Confounding factor 2: phonological phrasing• Assumption: the F0 peak difference is solely
due to downstep• X in UX: no downstep• X in AX: downstep• UX may form (UX)
• AX must form (A)(X) because of accentculminativity and anti-lapse constraint• An F0 rise at Region 2 indicates aphonological boundary.
• To accurately diagnose downstep,
phonological phrasing should be controlled

Region 2

Region 1

0.907496134
1.07133826

150
140

Region 2Downstep

Peak of X

120

Pitch (Hz)• However, phonological phrasing differs

Region 1

100

Peak of X

80

60

Unaccented＋Accented

Accented＋Accented

50
a

ne

nome ma’ia’ni

nomema’0i
2.411

Time (s)12Experiment• Participants: 8 native speakers of Tokyo Japanese• Procedure: Production experiment• 6 items × 4 conditions × 3 repetitions = 72 tokens wererecorded.
• Sixty sentences (360 tokens) fillers.

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Item
Unaccented (U)Accented (A) + Accented (A)+ Accented (A)Downstep

ane-ya”sister-and”

memai“dizziness”

ani-ya“brother-and”

memai“dizziness”

Region 1
Region 2
Region 1
Region 2• Parallel structure leads to the insertion of phonological boundaries• Controlling phonological phrasing (U)(A) vs. (A)(A)• Two measurements• F0 peak at Region 2: traditional paradigmatic diagnosis• F0 rise in Region 2: Controlling the spill-over effect of accents14

Measurement 2: F0 rise in Region 2
Unaccented (U)+ Accented (A)Accented (A) + Accented (A)memaiani-yaDownstep

ane-ya”sister-and”“dizziness”

Region 1

Region 2“brother-and”

Region 1

memai“dizziness”

Region 2• Accent-driven account: UA (no downstep) > AA (downstep)• F0 rise in Region 2 in UA is larger than in AA because of downstep• Boundary-driven account: UA (no downstep) < AA (downstep)• F0 rise at Region 2 in UA is smaller than in AA15

Analysis• the linear mixed-effects model (LME) with backward
selection (Bates et al., 2015)• with subjects and items as random effects

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Results: F0 rise in Region 2• Predictions• Accent-driven account: UA (no downstep) > AA (downstep)• Boundary-driven account: UA (no downstep) < AA (downstep)• Results: UA (no downstep) < AA (downstep)• Supporting boundary-driven account17

Conclusion: downstep is triggered by boundaries• For 55 years, it has been believed that accents triger
downstep (accent-driven account).
• The results from the esperiment show that not accents but
rather phonological boundaries trigger downstep (boundarydriven account).

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Selected References• Bates, D., Kliegl, R., Vasishth, S. and Baayen, H. (2015). Parsimonious mixed models. arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.04967.
• Ishihara, S. (2015). Japanese downstep revisited”. en. In: Nat. Lang. Linguist. Theory 34.4, pp. 1389–1443.
• Ito, J., & Mester, A. (2013). Prosodic subcategories in Japanese. Lingua, 124, 20-40.
• Kubozono, H. (1993). The organization of Japanese prosody. Tokyo: Kurosio.
• McCawley, J.D. (1968). The phonological component of a grammar of Japanese.
• Poser, W.J. (1984). The phonetics and phonology of tone and intonation in Japanese.
• Igarashi, Y. et al. (Aug. 2013). “Phonological theory informs the analysis of intonational exaggeration in Japanese infantdirected speech”. en. In: J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 134.2, pp. 1283–1294• Hirayama, M., H. K. Hwang, and T. Kato (Jan. 2022). “Lexical Category and Downstep in Japanese”. en. In: Languages
7.1, p. 25.
• Furukawa, K. and Y. Hirose (2019). “Boundary-driven downstep in Japanese”. In: Proceedings of the 19th International
Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Ed. by Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain & Paul Warren. Melbourne,
Australia: assta.org, pp. 1009–1013.

Thank you!
Part of this work was supported by JST SPRING Grant Number JPMJSP2140 and JSPS KAKENHI Grant
Number JP21H05054

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