Pitch accent

From Free net encyclopedia

Pitch accent is a kind of accent system employed in many languages around the world. In a pitch-accented language, there is one accented syllable or mora in a word, the position of which determines the tonal pattern of the whole word.

This is unlike the situation in tone languages, where the tone of each syllable can be independent of the other syllables in the word. For example, comparing two-syllable words like [aba] in a pitch-accented language and in a tonal language, both of which only distinguish low tone from high, the tonal language has four possible patterns: low-low [àbà], high-high [ábá], high-low [ábà], low-high [àbá]. The pitch-accent language, on the other hand, only has two possibilities: accented on the first syllable, [ába], or on the second, [abá].

1 In Indo-European languages
- 1.1 In Serbo-Croatian
2 In Japanese
3 In Shanghainese
4 See also
5 External link

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In Indo-European languages

It is hypothesized that Proto-Indo-European had a pitch accent system. Some well-known ancient Indo-European tongues to have preserved this feature are:

Ancient Greek had a pitch accent, which later changed into a stress accent (where accented syllables are pronounced more forcefully, as in English, instead of having a higher pitch).
Vedic Sanskrit.

In other Indo-European languages, such as Swedish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, and Serbo-Croatian (from Proto-Slavic), a new pitch accent system evolved that is unrelated to that of Proto-Indo-European.

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In Serbo-Croatian

In Serbo-Croatian, lexical words (such as nouns) of one syllable always have a falling tone. Words with two or more syllables may also have a falling tone, but (with the exception of foreign borrowings and interjections) only on the first syllable. However, they may instead have a rising tone, on any syllable but the last.

Enclitics (little grammatical words which latch on to a preceding lexical word) never have a pitch accent. Proclitics (clitics which latch on to a following word), on the other had, may "steal" a falling tone (but not a rising tone) from the following word. This stolen accent may end up being either falling or rising on the proclitic:

	in isolation		with proclitic
rising	Template:IPA	winter	Template:IPA	in the winter
rising	Template:IPA		Template:IPA
falling	Template:IPA	town	Template:IPA	to town (stays falling)
falling	Template:IPA	wood	Template:IPA	in the wood (becomes rising)

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In Japanese

Japanese is often described as having pitch accent. (See Japanese pitch accent.) However, unlike in Serbo-Croatian, it is only found in about 20% of Japanese words; 80% are unaccented. This "accent" may be characterized as a downstep rather than as pitch accent. The pitch of a word rises until it reaches a downstep, then drops abruptly. In a two-syllable word, this results in a contrast between high-low and low-high; accentless words are also low-high, but the pitch of following enclitics differentiates them.

Accent on first mora			Accent on second mora			Accentless
Template:IPA	牡蠣	oyster	Template:IPA	垣	fence	Template:IPA	柿	persimmon
high-low-low			low-high-low			low-high-high

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In Shanghainese

The Shanghai dialect of Wu Chinese is marginally tonal, with characteristics of pitch accent.

Not counting closed syllables (those with a final glottal stop), a Shanghainese word of one syllable may carry one of three tones, high, mid, low. (These tones have a contour in isolation, but for our purposes that can be ignored.) However, low always occurs after voiced consonants, and only there. Thus the only tonal distinction is after voiceless consonants and in vowel-initial syllables, and then there is only a two-way distinction between high and mid. In a polysyllabic word, the tone of the first syllable determines the tone of the entire word. If the first tone is high, following syllables are mid; if mid or low, the second syllable is high, and any following syllables are mid. Thus a mark for high tone is all that is needed to write tone in Shanghainese:

Voiced initial	zaunheinin	上海人	low-high-mid	"Shanghaier"
No voiced initial (mid tone)	aodaliya	澳大利亚	mid-high-mid-mid	"Australia"
No voiced initial (high tone)	kónkonchitso	公共汽車	high-mid-mid-mid	"bus"