エノモト　ミカ   榎本　美香    所属   メディア学部 メディア学科    職種   准教授
言語種別	英語
発行・発表の年月	2016/10
形態種別	国際会議論文
査読	査読あり
標題	Experimental Investigation of End-of-utterance Perception by Final Lowering in Spontaneous Japanese
執筆形態	共著
掲載誌名	Oriental COCOSDA 2016
掲載区分	国外
巻・号・頁	pp.205-209
著者・共著者	Yuishi Ishimoto and Mika Enomoto
概要	It is considered that final lowering, which is a phenomenon that the fundamental frequencies (F0s) fall significantly in sentence final position, marks the end of an utterance in Japanese. However, it is not clear whether the hearer utilizes final lowering to recognize the end of the utterance. In this paper we investigated effect of final lowering on the perception of an end of utterance in spontaneous Japanese speech. We adopt a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate final accentual phrases or utterance final elements related to the end of the utterance from prosodic features. Results suggested that final lowering was associated with the syntactic elements mostly placed at the end of a Japanese utterance, but not with the end of utterance itself. We, then, carried out perceptual experiments using Japanese utterances with modified F0s either in the middle or at the end. The results showed that the subjects detected the end of the utterance even in the absence of final lowering and were not affected by the presence of an F0 downstep simulating the final lowering in the middle of the utterance. That suggests that Japanese hearers do not use final lowering to perceive the end of an utterance.