This study investigates the underlying tonal pattern of pitch accent, the domain of tone interaction, and the prosodic structure of Northern Kyungsang Korean (NKK) by examining tone-syllable alignment and the realization of pitch accent in different tonal/prosodic contexts. Sixty-four sentences produced by six native speakers of NKK were digitized and f0 values of each syllable as well as the f0 minimum and maximum of each word were measured.

Based on quantitative data, we propose that the underlying tone of pitch accent in NKK is H*+L and that the left edge of a prosodic word is marked by a low boundary tone (%L). We found that the prosodic cue of focus differs depending on the location of the pitch accent within a prosodic word. For words with non-FINAL pitch accent, the pitch range expanded under focus, and the post-focus pitch accent was mostly downstepped and sometimes deleted. For words with FINAL pitch accent, however, the pitch range was either reduced or remained the same as that in the neutral condition, and the post-focus pitch accent was always upstepped. The domain of downstep and upstep was an Intermediate Phrase (ip), a prosodic unit immediately above a prosodic word.