What is "pitch accent"

n. (context linguistics English) A term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words.

n. emphasis that results from pitch rather than loudness [syn: tonic accent]

Pitch accent is a feature of certain languages whose variations in pitch (linguistic tones) can be used to differentiate words, but the potentially distinctive tones are restricted to one or two syllables within a word. That contrasts with fully- tonal languages like Standard Chinese in which each syllable can have an independent tone. In a pitch accent language, the syllable with phonemic tone is typically acoustically prominent ( stressed). Also, many words may not be marked for tone at all.

Languages that have been described as pitch accent languages include certain Scandinavian and South Slavic languages, Ancient Greek, Vedic Sanskrit, Japanese, Korean, Yaqui and Shanghainese.

It has been claimed that the term "pitch accent" is not coherently defined. Indeed, it is also used to denote a different feature, namely the use or relatively strong use of pitch, as opposed to other cues like acoustic intensity, to give prominence (accent) to a syllable or mora within a word. The latter feature is dealt with in the article pitch accent (intonation).

Pitch accent is a term used in autosegmental- metrical theory for local intonational features that are associated with particular syllables. Within this framework, pitch accents are distinguished from both the abstract metrical stress and the acoustic stress of a syllable. Different languages specify different relationships between pitch accent and stress placement.