The interaction of specialist accent and compounding structure in Japanese loanwords : Implications from a perception experiment

This study focused on the competing relationship between the specialist accent and compound accent rule, which are both viewed as post-lexical processes in Tokyo Japanese. An acceptability rating with six levels using audio stimuli of varying conditions was conducted to test how native Tokyo Japanese speakers evaluated unaccented simplex words and compound words. The rating scores for the compounds and simplex words were significantly different and showed an interaction with the accent, indicating that compound words were rated as less natural when being deaccentuated compared to simplex words. This supports the hypothesis that specialist accent is applied prior to or simultaneously with the compound accent rule. The effect of syllabic structure is also observed, demonstrating that syllable structure also affects naturalness evaluation when a word is deaccentuated.