Rise in pitch right before quotative って?

Question

On the last mora of reported speech, right before って, I sometimes hear a high pitch (or maybe stress) where I would normally not expect one. If there is a ない in front of the って, for example, I often perceive the い to be really high in tone and somehow stressed. I'm not too good at distinguishing and noticing pitch, however, so I might just be imagining things, which is why I decided to ask.

Edit: It's been two weeks since I originally posted the question, but in a Youtube video, I found a really good example of what I meant: https://youtu.be/gR5KVIP7PKk?t=21m18s

It's where the lady says 「もしかしたらこの人ともう二度と会えないかもしれないっていう気持ちでいつも接しているんです。」 and the high い in front of って can be heard really well.

Answer 1

I think you're onto something here and I'm not completely sure how to best analyze it, but this might be a first start.

The usual って in reported speech has no effect on the pitch.

However, there is a colloquial use of って which indeed raises the pitch of the last mora before it:

• 食べるって【LHLLL】 normal pitch accent
• 食べるって【LHHLL】 colloquial pitch accent

The former is just reporting a piece of information, the latter (colloquial/slangy version) adds the nuance that something is "completely obvious/clear", with an implication like "I keep telling you that...", "As you should know perfectly well...", etc.

I guess this colloquial version is almost exclusively used by young people (and probably goes hand in hand with other slangy, "young" non-standard pitch accents).