Phrasal H-

This label marks the H- phrasal tone of the accentual phrase, the level of the prosodic hierarchy above the word. At this level, words may group together into prosodic units delimited by two tones: a H- phrasal tone and L% boundary tone. That is, there is a H- phrasal high near the beginning of the phrase, and a final L% boundary tone marking the end (more on the boundary tone in section 3.3.1). The H- phrasal tone is marked on each unaccented accentual phrase, and on any accented accentual phrase where the H- is distinguishable from of the high tone of the lexical accent (i.e. the shoulder for the H*+L).

The H- label should be placed within the second mora of the phrase. In Tokyo Japanese, this H- phrasal tone is associated phonologically to the second mora. The peak F0 in unaccented phrases (and at the end of the rise in accented phrases where the the H- is distinguishable) should occur around this point. The example narabu shows the marking of this tone in both unaccented and accented phrases. In this utterance, the H- label is marked on the second mora in both phrases. This location coincides with the peak F0 (disregarding segmental perturbations) in the first unaccented phrase /hEkO ni/ `level-PART', and at the end of the rise in the second accented phrase /narabu yO' ni/ `line up so that'. Example sankaku also shows the marking of the H- label, placed on the second mora (at the high F0) of the phrase /maNnaka ni/ `middle-LOC'.

<<narabu>> ``I will make it so that they line up level with each other.''

In some utterances the second mora may not coincide with the actual high F0 of the phrase (or the end of the rise in accented phrases). In such cases, the label `` <'' (late F0 event) should be used to mark the actual high F0 point. This is the same labelling convention used for the H*+L accent label, i.e. the H tone label (H*+L or H-) is placed on the relevant mora, and the < label is used to mark the actual event if it occurs later. The example kazumi shows an utterance in which the high of the phrase is realized after the second mora (after the first word, in fact).

<<kazumi>> ``Kazumi called her.''

Marking the actual high F0 event associated with the phrasal H- will make it possible to automatically extract an estimate of the pitch range or prominence of unaccented phrases (and even accented phrases in which the H- is higher than the shoulder of the accentual H*+L) for use in future research. Thus, as with H*+L, the labeller should take care to place the H- label (or the < label) at a reliable point in the F0 contour.

Words accented on the last mora (e.g. /kami'/ `paper') which are intonation phrase final do not contain an accentual fall (in Tokyo Japanese), and thus are not distinguishable from unaccented words. In such cases where no fall is observed (e.g. when a pause or some disfluency follows), J_ToBI prescribes that the high F0 of these words be marked using the phrasal H-, and not with the accentual H*+L.