The role of pitch accent in lexical recognition in Japanese: evidence from event-related potential and gamma-band activity
Abstract
This study examined (i) the stage at which pitch accents contribute to lexical processing in native Japanese speakers and (ii) the interpretation pathway for the meaning of words pronounced with incorrect pitch accents. Event-related potential analyses during spoken word processing showed that words with incorrect accents elicited greater N400 amplitudes than those with correct accents, indicating that accent information aids in selecting suitable candidates from activated lexicons rather than in lexical activation itself. We employed a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm for the second aim, which involved exposure to a spoken word (prime) followed by a picture (target). Analyses of event-related spectral perturbations showed that the facilitation of semantic processing of the picture, indicated by low-gamma activity, occurred only after correctly accented words and not after incorrectly accented words. These findings suggest that incorrect Japanese pitch accents inhibit full access to their semantic contents when the words are spoken without appropriate contexts.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Kuniya Nasukawa and Takahiro Soshi for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank Kanae Ito, Tao Xie, Yunjie Ha, Koya Sato for data collection, and Natsumi Yamashita for acoustic measuring of the auditory stimuli. This research was supported in part by the following grant: the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (SCOP.) No. 19H05589 (M.K.), Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory) No. 18K18496 (S.K.), Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up No. 23K18681 (T.N.), Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists No. 24K16067 (T.N.), grants from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) No. JPMJMS2292 (M.N.). The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
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Supplementary Material
This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/jjl-2025-2008).
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Advancements in Japanese psycholinguistics: developmental and acquisitional perspectives
- Editors’ Notes
- Guest Editors’ Notes
- Articles
- Prosodic influence on quantifier scope interpretation in Japanese-speaking children and adults: a picture-selection study
- Incorrect association of the focus particle dake: new evidence from child Japanese
- Exploring the emergence of language-unique event perception and description in children
- The empathetic utterance-final particle -ne in Japanese: a study on its phonological representation
- Similarity effect in morphological generalization: Using the volitional form elicited production task of Japanese verbs with suru ending
- The role of pitch accent in lexical recognition in Japanese: evidence from event-related potential and gamma-band activity
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Advancements in Japanese psycholinguistics: developmental and acquisitional perspectives
- Editors’ Notes
- Guest Editors’ Notes
- Articles
- Prosodic influence on quantifier scope interpretation in Japanese-speaking children and adults: a picture-selection study
- Incorrect association of the focus particle dake: new evidence from child Japanese
- Exploring the emergence of language-unique event perception and description in children
- The empathetic utterance-final particle -ne in Japanese: a study on its phonological representation
- Similarity effect in morphological generalization: Using the volitional form elicited production task of Japanese verbs with suru ending
- The role of pitch accent in lexical recognition in Japanese: evidence from event-related potential and gamma-band activity