Fundamental frequency as an acoustic cue to accent perception

It is generally recognized that the most significant cue to accent location is fundamental frequency (F0) in both Japanese and English. Furthermore, it is widely believed that a syllable is perceived as accented if the syllable contains an F0 peak. However, Sugito (1972) found that, in Japanese, if an F0 peak is followed by a steep F0 fall, the syllable preceding the F0 peak may be perceived as accented. In this article we present two experiments which investigate the relationship between F0 peak and F0 fall rate in accent perception for Japanese and English. The first experiment confirms that, for Japanese, both F0 peak location and F0 fall rate affect listeners' judgements of accent location. Specifically, the later the F0 peak occurs in a given syllable, relative to the syllable boundary, the greater the F0 fall rate necessary for listeners to perceive the preceding syllable as accented. The second experiment shows that this phenomenon is not unique to Japanese: Perception of accent location in English is also influenced by both F0 peak location and post-peak F0 fall rate.