In Tokyo Japanese, pitch accent changes during sentence production affect prosodic phrasing. Which mechanism explains why a high-high pitch sequence at a phrase boundary becomes a rising contour?

💡 Explanation

Downstep reduction is responsible because it attenuates high pitches within a phrase, but it resets at the phrase boundary. Therefore, the second high pitch is perceived as relatively higher, resulting in a rising contour, rather than a level pitch, due to continuous downstep.

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