Nouns: 3~4 Moras (äžé«ć)
snphan | Oct. 31, 2021, 8:33 p.m.
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 äžé«ć pattern. If you did the quiz in the last post then you probably ran into the word æ„æŹèȘèœć詊éšă»ă«ă»ăăăźăăăăăăă which has a pitch number of 101. This happens because the last noun unit è©Šéš has a pitch number of 2: it's äžé«ă! 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 äžé«ć 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. 詊éšă»ăăă has a pitch number of 2, so the pitch drops after the ă in ăăă. Any nouns tacked onto the beginning of ăăă will then drop after the ă as well according Shunyaku's rule. This means that whether the compound noun is æ„æŹèȘèœć詊éšă» ă«ă»ăăăźăăăăăăă, ć€éšè©Šéšă»ăăă¶ăăă, æšĄæŹè©Šéšă»ăăăăă, ć „ćŠè©Šéšă»ă«ă ăăăăăă, ćžæłè©Šéšă»ăă»ăăăă, or even 性ćŠć „詊ă»ăłăżăŒè©Šéš, the pitch will always drop after the ă if è©Šéš is the last noun unit. Here are the pitch accent patterns for the words just mentioned:
Word | Pitch Accent | # |
---|---|---|
æ„æŹ(3)ă»èȘă»èœć(1)ă»è©Šéš(2) | ă«ă»ăăăźăăăăăăă | 10 |
ć€éš(1)ă»è©Šéš(2) | ăăă¶ăăă | 5 |
æšĄæŹ(1)ă»è©Šéš(2) | ăăăăă | 4 |
ć „ćŠ(0)ă»è©Šéš(2) | ă«ă ăăăăăă | 6 |
ćžæł(0)ă»è©Šéš(2) | ăă»ăăăă | 5 |
性ćŠ(0)ă»ć „詊(0)ă»ă»ăłăżăŒ(1)ă»è©Šéš(2) | ă ăăăă«ă ăăăăăăŒăăă | 13 |
Let's take a look at the words that end in ç©èȘ(3)ă»ăăźăăă. ç©èȘ has a pitch accent of 3, so that means that the drop occurs after ă. Irrespective of the number of noun units attached before ç©èȘ, the pitch will drop after the ă in ăăźăăă. This may be a stretch, but let's look at the Monogatari series:
Word | Pitch Accent | # |
---|---|---|
ć(2)ă»ç©èȘ(3) | ă°ăăăźăăă | 5 |
ćœ(0)ă»ç©èȘ(3) | ă«ăăăźăăă | 5 |
ç«(1)ă»ç©èȘ(3) | ăăăăźăăă | 5 |
ćŸă»ç©èȘ(3) | ăă¶ăăăźăăă | 6 |
ćź(0)ă»ç©èȘ(3) | ăăšăăăźăăă | 6 |
éŹŒ(2)ă»ç©èȘ(3) | ăă«ăăźăăă | 5 |
That's it for today. Hope that helped and see you next time!
1‘Takoboto | Look up æ„æŹèȘèœć詊隒. Accessed 31 October 2021.
2Minematsu, Nobuaki & Shu, Shunyaku. “OJAD and Its Practical Use for Teaching/Learning Japanese Prosody,” n.d., 27.