Nouns: 3~4 Moras (中高型)

Hello again!

It's Monday again and you know what that means, another post!

This time, we will be tackling how to handle the compound nouns with a last noun unit of 3-4 moras and having the 中高型 pattern. If you did the quiz in the last post then you probably ran into the word 日本語能力試験・にほんごのうりょくしけん which has a pitch number of 10¹. This happens because the last noun unit 試験 has a pitch number of 2: it's 中高た!  So we can't drop the pitch after the first mora of the last noun unit. Can you guess what the rule is for the 中高型 case?

According to Shunyaku, the drop in the compound verb occurs wherever the drop is in the last noun unit². We'll take a little break from pitch numbers and just look at the moras in the word for now to clarify this concept. 試験・しけん has a pitch number of 2, so the pitch drops after the け in しけん. Any nouns tacked onto the beginning of しけん will then drop after the け as well according Shunyaku's rule. This means that whether the compound noun is 日本語能力試験・  にほんごのうりょくしけん, 外部試験・がいぶしけん, 模擬試験・もぎしけん, 入学試験・にゅうがくしけん, 司法試験・しほうしけん, or even 大学入試センター試験, the pitch will always drop after the け if 試験 is the last noun unit. Here are the pitch accent patterns for the words just mentioned:

Let's take a look at the words that end in 物語(3)・ものがたり. 物語 has a pitch accent of 3, so that means that the drop occurs after が. Irrespective of the number of noun units attached before 物語, the pitch will drop after the が in ものがたり. This may be a stretch, but let's look at the Monogatari series:

That's it for today. Hope that helped and see you next time!

¹‘Takoboto | Look up 日本語能力試験’. Accessed 31 October 2021.

²Minematsu, Nobuaki & Shu, Shunyaku. “OJAD and Its Practical Use for Teaching/Learning Japanese Prosody,” n.d., 27.