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From ear, despite what the conventional literature tells me, I often hear that the accented mora has a higher amplitude, not just coming before the downstep. This is particularly obvious in This Youtube fragment, where the recording equipment's low quality causes the audio to crackle on the ga-mora. Searching for it myself, I could only find this, referencing one study that finds it.

[...] and that since, in his data, the amplitude peak fell on the accented syllable in the words in which the F0 fall was delayed [...]

Obviously this is an argumentative piece, and I cannot find the actual named research anywhere though many others that also reference it, and I cannot find anything else that corroborates it and searching for anything just seems to draw a comparison to English where accent is indicated by amplitude — so does anyone else have anything that corroborates or disputes the notion that in Japanese, accented moræ tend to have a higher amplitude?

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  • In layman's terms, are you asking if the mora just before a downstep is louder, i.e. stressed? – Eiríkr Útlendi May 5 '20 at 18:32
  • Yes, one could phrase it as that. – Zorf May 6 '20 at 20:21
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi it's not entirely præcise and I præfer “accented mora” because, for instance, the research I linked also finds that sometimes the downstep is delayed and does not come right after an accented mora, in particular when the mora after the accented mora be devoiced — “mora before downstep” and “accented mora” are not entirely synonymous. – Zorf May 7 '20 at 14:56
  • How do you define "accented mora"? I have not encountered any such terminology before, as something separate from pitch accent. I suggest you update your question post to clarify. – Eiríkr Útlendi May 7 '20 at 17:18
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi Are you sure of this, for instance: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent a basic article like that mentions the term accented mora frequently; it is used in almost all literature that I know to explain how the pitch accent works. Japanese primarily indicates which mora has accent with pitch; I was wondering whether there is more that backs up the idea that loudness also plays a part. – Zorf May 8 '20 at 18:14

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