Prosodic features in "enka". The relationship between the melody of lyrics in "enka" and the prosody of Japanese

Abstract

Previous research on the relationship between the melody of lyrics and Japanese prosody has only approached the topic on a word accent level. In this paper, however, I examined to what extent four best-seller enka manifest prosody with reference to larger prosodic units. I found no consistent relationship between the accentual fall and word initial rise when looking at isolated words. However, a mutual principle, applicable on both intonation focus and the focus in melody was observed.