Intonational Accompaniments of Japanese Morphemes WA and GA

An experiment was conducted to study intonational characteristics that accompany the grammatical morphemes wa and ga in Japanese utterances. Twelve native speakers of Japanese read aloud twelve sentences that contained various sub-types of wa and ga. Acoustical analysis of fundamental frequency and pause durations revealed that wa was preceded by a larger fall in fundamental frequency than ga and that wa was frequently followed by a pause, unlike ga. Thematic and contrastive sub-types of wa were differentiated by pauses as well as fundamental frequency fall. Three sub-types of ga were not clearly differentiated by pauses, although differences were observed in the patterns of fundamental frequency.