음성음운형태론연구 19집 2호 Yoon, Tae-Jin

Yoon, Tae-Jin. 2013. A corpus-based study of downstep in English. Studies in

Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 19.2. 275-294. 

This paper presents evidence from acoustic analysis for a categorical distinction between downstepped and nondownstepped

high-toned pitch accents (H* vs. !H*) in American English. The present

study offers an explanation for the contradictory findings from prior acoustic studies

of downstep, which call into question the status of the downstepped accent in

American English as a legitimate prosodic category. It is shown in the paper that the

experimental findings from naturally occurring speech corpus provide evidence

for !H* as a distinct prosodic category. (Cheongju University)