ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014

Interpersonal factors affecting tones of question-type utterances in Japanese

Hiroaki Hatano, Carlos Ishi, Miyako Kiso

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the interpersonal factors affecting phrase final tones of question-type utterances in Japanese daily conversations. We extracted question-type utterances ending with final particles from our dialogue speech database and classified them into two categories according to the degree of information request. Prosodic features were then analyzed by focusing on phrase final F0 movement and pitch reset. Analysis results indicated that F0 rising and falling degrees increase when the speaker express a close attitude to the dialogue partner, such as in conversations among family members and infant-directed speech. In addition, the presence of pitch reset in the phrase final was found to have functions of relieving the speaker’s tension, when the dialogue partners have distant relationship.