Pitch Accent

Pitch accent is a kind of accent system employed in many Language s 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 Language s, where the tone of each syllable can be independent of the other syllables in the word. For example, comparing two-syllable words like 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'' ''high-low'' [ábà , ''low-high'' The pitch-accent language, on the other hand, only has two possibilities: accented on the first syllable, [ába , or on the second, [abá].

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.

In Serbo-Croatian

In Serbo-Croatian, Lexical Word s (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.

Enclitic s (little Grammatical Word s which latch on to a preceding lexical word) never have a pitch accent. Proclitic s (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 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.

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 Consonant s, 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:

SEE ALSO

Timing (linguistics)

Tonal Language

Stress Accent

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Pitch Accent