Pitch accent

Pitch accent is a way some spoken languages make one syllable in a word stand out by giving it a special pitch pattern. A small rise or fall in pitch on that one syllable can change the word’s meaning, or simply make it sound “right” to native speakers.

This is different from a stress accent, which English uses. In English the important syllable is mainly louder and longer, not higher or lower.

Languages that use pitch accent include Japanese, Swedish, and Serbo-Croatian.

 How it works 
In a pitch-accent language, only one syllable (or mora) of a word gets the special pitch. The other syllables follow a regular pattern. Moving the accent to a different place can turn the word into another word.

 Examples 

 In Japanese 
Japanese shows clear pitch accent. The same sounds can mean different things depending on the accent position.

 hashi (はし) – HIGH-low → “chopsticks”  
 hashi (はし) – low-HIGH → “bridge”  
 hashi that stays high – low-HIGH-HIGH → “edge”

 In Swedish 
Swedish has two pitch-accent “melodies,” called Accent 1 and Accent 2. Some words are spelled the same but change meaning with a different melody.

 anden with Accent 1 → “the duck”  
 anden with Accent 2 → “the spirit”

 In Serbo-Croatian 
Standard Serbo-Croatian has four pitch accents (two rising and two falling).

 Pitch accent vs. Tone 
Pitch accent is different from a full tone language such as Mandarin Chinese.  
 In a tone language, every syllable has its own tone pattern.  
 In a pitch-accent language, only one syllable in the word gets a special accent; the others are predictable.

So pitch accent can be seen as a simpler system than tone.

 Related pages 
 Intonation
 Stress (linguistics)
 Tone (linguistics)
 Prosody
 Phonology

 References 

Category:Phonology
Category:Linguistics