Pitch Accent for Japanese Verbs and Adjectives: The Binary Class Rule and Conjugation Shifts

Japanese pitch accent for verbs and adjectives combines a two-state lexical contrast (accented, 有核, or unaccented, 無核) with a small set of rules. Those rules say where the kernel surfaces in each conjugated form.¹ Learners who already know the four noun patterns often hit a wall here. Nouns stay fixed in citation form, while verbs and adjectives change shape constantly, and the accent locus moves with them.¹²

Overview

Why verbs and adjectives need their own page

The four noun patterns (heiban, atamadaka, nakadaka, odaka) are defined on a fixed citation form. A noun stem of n morae has n + 1 possible patterns. The drop can sit after any mora or be absent, and the citation-form pattern stays stable across particles and the copula.¹³

Verbs and adjectives have no such stability. Plain たべる becomes たべます, たべて, たべた, たべない, たべれば, たべられる, たべさせる. The mora count changes, and the accent locus moves with it.¹²

Kawahara 2015 puts the empirical generalization for inflecting word classes precisely: verbs and adjectives "do not contrast in terms of the location of accent; rather, the contrast is simply a matter of accented vs. unaccented."¹ The four-pattern noun model is therefore the wrong frame for verbs and adjectives. The right frame is a binary class label plus a small set of conjugation rules.

The binary that replaces the four patterns

For verbs and adjectives, the only lexical distinction is accented (有核, yūkaku; equivalently 起伏式, kifukushiki) vs. unaccented (無核, mukaku; equivalently 平板式, heibanshiki).¹⁴

起伏式 is an umbrella term covering every accented case; 平板式 is the unaccented case. Haraguchi 1999 uses these umbrella terms to organize the Japanese accent literature.⁴

For an accented verb or adjective, the citation-form locus is predictable from the binary label plus a penultimate-mora default (with a small antepenultimate exception class). In other words, the lexicon only needs to record one bit per verb or adjective, not four pattern labels.¹⁵

For an unaccented verb or adjective, the citation form is flat (LHH…, apart from the initial-rise convention), and most conjugated forms stay flat. A few carve-outs (ます, ば, the i-adjective negative) introduce a kernel anyway.²⁶⁷

Audience and what you should already know

This page assumes you know the four noun patterns, the per-mora L/H decomposition of Tokyo accent, the OJAD overline diagrams, and the nine verb conjugations covered below.¹⁸ If you need that grounding, consult Kawahara 2015 for the L/H decomposition, the NHK 2016 dictionary for the notation, and OJAD for visual confirmation before continuing.¹⁹⁸

The accented vs unaccented (有核 / 無核) verb classes

What the two classes sound like

Unaccented verbs are flat to the end. The dictionary form rises after the obligatory initial-lowering and stays high through every later mora.¹²

行いく⁶
"to go."

Accented verbs have a downstep, by default on the penultimate mora of the dictionary form.¹⁵

食たべる²
"to eat."

書かく¹⁰
"to write."

The downstep is the only lexical signal; everything else is plateau. Kawahara 2015 frames it directly: "an accented vowel is assigned a High tone followed by a Low tone on the following vowel, resulting in an abrupt H(igh)-L(ow) fall in F0."¹ F0 means fundamental frequency, the acoustic measure that corresponds roughly to perceived pitch.

How to test class membership in three seconds

Three tests, in increasing order of reliability:

1. Citation-form drop test. Pronounce the plain form and listen for a H→L fall. A fall anywhere inside the word means accented; no fall means unaccented.¹³
2. ます-form drop test. Conjugate to ます and listen for the drop landing on ま. This test works because the ます-override rule (see below) imposes a fixed kernel on ま regardless of class. The diagnostic is not the presence of the drop on ま, but the contour before the stem boundary.²
3. OJAD lookup as the tie-breaker. OJAD prints the integer accent number, draws the overline diagram, and synthesizes the contour through its Suzuki-kun module.⁸¹¹

Listening alone fails for two-mora verbs

Vance 2008, summarized in Kawahara 2015: monomoraic and short accented vs. unaccented words "are phonetically very similar, if not identical, when they appear in isolation."¹⁵ For two-mora verbs, use a particle or auxiliary test, or open OJAD.

Why this binary, not four patterns

Kawahara 2015 again: in verbs and adjectives "the contrast is simply a matter of accented vs. unaccented."¹ The four pattern labels (atamadaka, nakadaka, odaka, heiban) are defined on noun citation forms; their conjugation-stable interpretations carry over to verbs only as a description of the dictionary-form contour, not as the lexical category.

A learner who sees 飲む glossed "accent 1, atamadaka" in a noun-style dictionary entry is reading a description of the dictionary-form contour. The lexically stored fact is "accented (有核)"; the surface "atamadaka" follows from the penultimate-mora default applied to a 2-mora stem.¹

The "nakadaka" and "odaka" labels are not lexical categories for verbs at all. Nakadaka surface contours arise on accented verbs whose stem is three or more morae. For example, たべる, accent 2, LHꜜL, is nakadaka in surface terms. Odaka surface contours are not observed on verb stems because the penultimate-mora default structurally blocks a kernel on the final mora.¹²

The locus-shift rule across verb conjugations

The penultimate-mora rule for accented verbs

For an accented verb, the kernel sits on the second-to-last independent mora (自立拍) of the form.¹³ An independent mora excludes the second half of a long vowel, the second half of a geminate (the small っ), and the moraic nasal ん. These are "special morae" (特殊拍), which cannot carry the kernel.¹

Dictionary-form examples:

Verb	Morae	Kernel	Contour	Accent
飲のむ	2	の	[nóꜜmù] HꜜL	1
書かく	2	か	[káꜜkù] HꜜL	1
食たべる	3	べ	[tàbéꜜrù] LHꜜL	2

When the penultimate mora is a special mora, the kernel shifts one mora leftward to the antepenultimate.¹⁵ Vance 2008 identifies forms like 帰る (かえる) as the standard case: the kernel sits on か rather than え.⁵¹²

帰かえる¹²
"to return home."

When the form lengthens through conjugation, the kernel moves rightward to stay at the new penultimate (subject to the same special-mora carve-out). When the form shortens, it sits at the new penultimate.¹²

Unaccented verbs stay flat

An unaccented verb has no kernel and therefore no downstep in any conjugated form, with two systematic carve-outs (ます and ば, treated below).¹²⁷

Walk 行く (いく, accent 0) through the paradigm. The shape grows and shrinks, but it never breaks:

• Plain: いく, [ìkú], LH.⁶
• て-form: いって, flat.
• た-form: いった, flat.⁶
• ない-form: いかない, flat.

The kernel introduced by ます or ば is contributed by the suffix, not by the verb stem; the verb itself remains category-flat for lexical purposes.⁷

The ます-form is the one form that overrides the binary

The ます-form is pre-accenting: it forces a kernel onto the ま of ます regardless of the verb's lexical class.¹⁷ In plain terms, the suffix brings its own accent. The pedagogical primer Tatsumoto 2024 states it as a single rule: "when ます attaches to any verb, it overrides the verb's original pitch accent. The original accent of the verb does not matter."⁷

The override applies to the whole ます paradigm: ます, ました, ません, ましょう, ませんでした all carry the kernel on ま.¹⁷

食たべます²
"to eat (polite)."

行いきます⁶
"to go (polite)."

Both contours land on [LHHꜜL] past the stem boundary. The verb's lexical kernel on べ is suppressed; only the suffix kernel surfaces. This is why ます-form polite practice masks the verb's binary class. Every polite-form verb has the same shape on the ending, and the lexical accented/unaccented distinction is invisible in this single conjugation.²⁷

Verb conjugations, form by form

Reference table: nine forms × two classes

The table below covers nine forms for both classes. Worked examples follow the table.

Form	Suffix template	Unaccented (行く)	Accented (食べる)
Plain	-u / -ru	いく [ìkú] LH	たべる [tàbéꜜrù] LHꜜL (kernel on penultimate mora)
ます	-masu (fixed)	いきます [ìkímáꜜsù] LHHꜜL	たべます [tàbémáꜜsù] LHHꜜL (suffix overrides)
て	-te	いって [ìtté] LH-flat	たべて [táꜜbètè] HꜜLL (kernel one mora leftward)
た	-ta	いった [ìttá] LH-flat	たべた [táꜜbètà] HꜜLL
ない	-nai	いかない [ìkánáì] LHHH	たべない [tàbéꜜnàì] LHꜜLL (kernel before な)
ば	-eba / -reba	いけば [ìkéꜜbà] LHꜜL (kernel on け)	たべれば [tàbéꜜrèbà] LHꜜLL (kernel on れ)
Potential	-eru / -rareru	いける [ìkéꜜrù] LHꜜL	たべられる [tàbéráréꜜrù] LHHHꜜL (penultimate)
Passive	-(r)areru	いかれる [ìkáréꜜrù] LHHꜜL	たべられる [tàbéráréꜜrù] LHHHꜜL (penultimate)
Causative	-(s)aseru	いかせる [ìkáséꜜrù] LHHꜜL	たべさせる [tàbésáséꜜrù] LHHHꜜL (penultimate)

The contour shapes for the worked verbs are taken from the NHK-aligned pitch tables on Wiktionary for 食べる and 行く.²⁶ The general rules are stated in Kawahara 2015, Wikipedia, and the OJAD documentation, and confirmed against the k3zi gist contour templates and the Tatsumoto primer.^18113713 These rules are: the penultimate-mora default, the ます override, the te/ta shift to the mora before the suffix, the ない accent on the mora before な, the ば accent on -reba, and the potential/passive/causative re-accent.

The antepenultimate exception

帰る (かえる) and 返す (かえす) sit in an exception class. Their penultimate position is the second half of a vowel sequence functioning as a special-mora environment, so the kernel ends up one mora further left than the penultimate-mora default would predict.⁵¹² Treat them as memorized rather than derived.

Plain (dictionary) form

Accented verbs carry the kernel on the penultimate independent mora. Unaccented verbs are flat.¹

ます-form

The kernel falls on ま, regardless of class. The ました, ません, ましょう, ませんでした series inherits the same fixed locus.¹²⁶⁷

The two surface contours are identical past the stem boundary; the underlying class is recoverable only from the plain form or other non-overriding conjugations.⁷

て-form and た-form

For accented verbs the kernel sits on the mora before て / た. The kernel moves leftward from the plain-form position to land on the syllable directly preceding the suffix.² The morphology of these two forms is covered separately: the て-form and the た-form.

食たべて²
"eating / eat-て."

食たべた²
"ate."

Unaccented verbs stay flat.⁶

The cheat-sheet template "0 / -3" used by some learner resources is a compact restatement of this rule.¹³ Unaccented stays at accent 0. Accented shifts the kernel to a position three morae from the end of the te / ta form for stems of length three or more, equivalent to "the mora before the て / た." For two-mora accented stems, the rule reduces to "kernel on the first mora of the te / ta form."¹⁰

ない-form

Accented verbs put the kernel on the mora before な of ない. Unaccented verbs stay flat.²⁶ (For the morphology of the plain negative, see the ない-form.)

食たべない²
"does not eat."

行いかない⁶
"does not go."

The accented-verb pattern preserves the underlying class membership through the negative; this is the conjugation where the binary is most reliably audible to a learner.²⁶

Verbal ない and i-adjective ない are not symmetric

The i-adjective negative -kunai behaves differently from this verbal ない. The i-adjective section below treats it as ku-form plus an atamadaka ない: a two-domain contour with two H peaks, not one.⁷

ば-form (conditional)

Accented verbs land the kernel on れ of -reba (on the mora before ば). Unaccented verbs also get a kernel: ば has a pre-accenting effect on Group I unaccented verbs.²⁷¹³ The conditional morphology is treated in full on the ば conditional page.

食たべれば²
"if (one) eats."

行いけば⁶
"if (one) goes."

Phrased cautiously: ば introduces a kernel on the mora before ば for unaccented Group I verbs. Compact learner summaries describe ば as pre-accenting, like ます. Kawahara 2015 treats ba-form accent under the more general kernel-shifting analysis without isolating it as its own pre-accenting suffix.¹⁷¹³

Potential (-eru / -rareru)

The derived potential form stem is treated as a new verb in the accented class. The longer form takes a penultimate-mora kernel regardless of the source verb's class.¹²⁶

食たべられる²
"can eat."

行いける⁶
"can go."

Both forms carry a kernel on their penultimate independent mora (れ in 食べられる, け in 行ける), even though the source verb 行く is unaccented. The source-class distinction collapses. This is why long polite potentials can sound roughly alike if you are not listening closely to the stem.²⁶⁷

Passive and causative (-(r)areru, -(s)aseru)

Passive and causative forms have the same re-accenting behavior as potential forms: the longer derived stem is re-analyzed as an accented verb and takes a penultimate-mora kernel.¹²⁶ The morphology of each is covered on the passive voice and causative form pages.

食たべさせる²
"make (someone) eat."

行いかせる⁶
"make (someone) go."

The source-class distinction collapses on passive and causative, just as it does on potential forms.¹²⁶

Worked example A: unaccented 行く (go)

Class: unaccented (無核), dictionary accent 0. No kernel in the dictionary form; the lexical category is flat.⁶

Form	Kana	Pitch contour	Notes
Plain	いく	[ìkú] LH	flat (heiban)
ます	いきます	[ìkímáꜜsù] LHHꜜL	suffix kernel on ま (ます override)
て	いって	[ìtté] LH	flat
た	いった	[ìttá] LH	flat
ない	いかない	[ìkánáì] LHHH	flat (verb ない preserves unaccented class)
ば	いけば	[ìkéꜜbà] LHꜜL	suffix kernel on け (mora before ば)
Potential	いける	[ìkéꜜrù] LHꜜL	re-accent to penultimate け
Passive	いかれる	[ìkáréꜜrù] LHHꜜL	re-accent to penultimate れ
Causative	いかせる	[ìkáséꜜrù] LHHꜜL	re-accent to penultimate せ

Per-form pitch table from Wiktionary's NHK-aligned 行く entry; the unaccented-class generalization is from Kawahara 2015.¹⁶

学校がっこうに行いきます。⁹⁶
"I go to school."

The ます-form contour [ìkímáꜜsù] LHHꜜL is identical to the contour of 食べます past the stem boundary, despite the source-class difference. 行く is unaccented, 食べる is accented, and ます imposes the same shape on both.⁶⁷

Worked example B: accented 食べる (eat)

Class: accented (有核), dictionary accent 2. The kernel sits on べ by the penultimate-mora default.²

Form	Kana	Pitch contour	Notes
Plain	たべる	[tàbéꜜrù] LHꜜL	kernel on penultimate independent mora べ
ます	たべます	[tàbémáꜜsù] LHHꜜL	suffix kernel on ま; stem kernel suppressed
て	たべて	[táꜜbètè] HꜜLL	kernel moves left to the mora before て
た	たべた	[táꜜbètà] HꜜLL	same pattern as te-form
ない	たべない	[tàbéꜜnàì] LHꜜLL	kernel on べ (mora before な)
ば	たべれば	[tàbéꜜrèbà] LHꜜLL	kernel on れ
Potential	たべられる	[tàbéráréꜜrù] LHHHꜜL	re-accent to penultimate れ
Passive	たべられる	[tàbéráréꜜrù] LHHHꜜL	identical to potential surface form
Causative	たべさせる	[tàbésáséꜜrù] LHHHꜜL	re-accent to penultimate せ

Per-form pitch table from Wiktionary's NHK-aligned 食べる entry; the per-form rules are from Kawahara 2015 and OJAD.¹⁸²

朝あさごはんを食たべます。⁹²
"I eat breakfast."

食たべられる。²
"(It) can be eaten." / "(I) can eat."

The 食べられる contour [tàbéráréꜜrù] LHHHꜜL is the same surface shape whether the form is potential or passive. The re-accent to the penultimate mora collapses both readings into one contour.²

I-adjective conjugations

The same accented vs unaccented split

I-adjectives, like verbs, are lexically either accented or unaccented.¹³

Accented i-adjectives carry the kernel on the last independent mora before い of the dictionary form. Kawahara 2015 states the rule this way: "adjectival dictionary forms are accented (if they are accented at all) on the last independent mora, which is usually the mora right before い."¹

Adjective	Morae	Kernel	Contour	Accent
高たかい	3	か	[tàkáꜜì] LHꜜL	2
良よい	2	よ	[yóꜜì] HꜜL	1
面白おもしろい	4	ろ	[òmòshìróꜜì] LLLHꜜL	4

Unaccented i-adjectives are flat through the dictionary form.¹¹⁴

赤あかい¹⁴
"red."

Attributive and predicative (たかい, あおい)

The attributive form (modifying a noun, e.g. 高い 山) and predicative form (sentence-final, e.g. 山が 高い) are identical in shape. The dictionary form is unchanged, so the pitch contour is the dictionary-form contour in both syntactic positions.¹³

高たかい山やま¹⁵
"a tall mountain."

山やまが高たかい。¹⁵
"The mountain is tall."

Both sentences carry [tàkáꜜì] on the adjective. Because the attributive and predicative forms are identical, the i-adjective binary is fully recoverable from any sentence that contains the dictionary form. This differs from verbs, where ます can mask the binary.

ku-form (たかく, あおく)

For accented i-adjectives, the ku-form keeps the kernel on the same mora as in the dictionary form. Wiktionary records the modern Tokyo contour for 高く as [tàkáꜜkù] LHꜜL: kernel on か, one mora before く, exactly as in the dictionary form.¹⁵

Wiktionary also records a competing older pattern, [táꜜkàkù] HꜜLL, reflecting the historical kernel-shift convention. The NHK 2016 dictionary records the modern [tàkáꜜkù] form as primary, with the older form as a variant.⁹¹⁵

For unaccented adjectives the ku-form stays flat: 赤い [àkáí] LHH → 赤く [àkákú] LHH.¹⁴

The ku-form is the adverbial form (高く 飛ぶ "fly high") and the input to the -ku-nai negative and to verb-attaching forms like -ku naru "become high."¹

ta-form (たかかった, あおかった)

The -katta past keeps the kernel on the same mora as the ku-form. This pattern naturally extends the ku-form because -katta is structurally -ku + -atta, with the same kernel logic as -ku alone.¹¹⁵

Adjective	Kana	Contour
Accented	たかかった	[tàkáꜜkàttà] LHꜜLLL
Unaccented	あかかった	[àkákáttá] LHHHH

kereba conditional (たかければ, あおければ)

For accented adjectives, the kernel stays on the same mora as in the ku-form. For unaccented adjectives, the form stays flat.¹⁵¹⁴ The -kereba pattern mirrors the -katta pattern. Both behave like extensions of the ku-form rather than as their own kernel-bearing suffixes.¹¹⁵

Adjective	Kana	Contour
Accented	たかければ	[tàkáꜜkèrèbà] LHꜜLLL
Unaccented	あかければ	[àkákérébá] LHHHH

The ない exception for i-adjectives

The i-adjective negative -kunai is not symmetric with the verbal ない. Pedagogical summaries phrase the analysis as: "Negative forms function as if they are a combination of the pitch pattern of the く form of the adjective, plus a suitably conjugated form of the 頭高 word ない."⁷

The analysis predicts this contour: the ku-form contour continues through く, then ない is realized as an independent atamadaka unit with its own H→L pattern starting on な and dropping to い.

高たかくない¹⁵⁷
"not expensive / not tall."

赤あかくない¹⁴⁷
"not red."

For 高くない the contour is [tàkáꜜkù náꜜì]: two H peaks (one on か, one on な), each followed by its own drop. For the unaccented 赤くない the contour is [àkákù náꜜì]: the ku-form is flat, and the appended ない is the atamadaka unit that supplies the only kernel in the word.

This is the single place in this topic where the within-word once-low-stays-low rule appears to break. That rule is a corollary of the one-drop constraint; see Kawahara 2015.¹ The "ku-form + atamadaka ない" analysis treats -kunai as a two-prosodic-word complex rather than a single word, which preserves the one-drop rule by relocating the boundary.⁷

Pedagogical attribution

The "ku-form + atamadaka ない" framing is the standard summary in learner-facing primers. It is consistent with the Wiktionary per-form contours for 高い and 赤い.¹⁵¹⁴⁷ Kawahara 2015 treats this under the more general theory of compound prosody and does not phrase it as a single rule. So it is better treated as "behaves as if" than as a derivational rule applied inside the morpheme.¹

Worked example C: accented 高い (expensive, tall)

Class: accented (有核), dictionary accent 2. Kernel on か.¹⁵

Form	Kana	Pitch contour	Notes
Attributive	たかい (+ noun)	[tàkáꜜì] LHꜜL	dictionary contour, used in 高い 山
Predicative	たかい	[tàkáꜜì] LHꜜL	identical to attributive
ku-form	たかく	[tàkáꜜkù] LHꜜL	kernel stays on か
ta-form	たかかった	[tàkáꜜkàttà] LHꜜLLL	-katta extends the ku-form pattern
kereba	たかければ	[tàkáꜜkèrèbà] LHꜜLLL	-kereba extends the ku-form pattern
Negative	たかくない	[tàkáꜜkù náꜜì]	ku-form + atamadaka ない (two-domain contour)

Per-form pitch contours from Wiktionary's NHK-aligned 高い entry; the negative analysis from Tatsumoto 2024.¹⁵⁷

Worked example D: unaccented 赤い (red)

Class: unaccented (無核), dictionary accent 0. No kernel in any form except the negative.¹⁴

Form	Kana	Pitch contour	Notes
Attributive	あかい (+ noun)	[àkáí] LHH	flat
Predicative	あかい	[àkáí] LHH	flat
ku-form	あかく	[àkákú] LHH	flat
ta-form	あかかった	[àkákáttá] LHHHH	flat
kereba	あかければ	[àkákérébá] LHHHH	flat
Negative	あかくない	[àkákù náꜜì]	the one place an unaccented adjective is not flat: ない supplies the kernel

Per-form pitch contours from Wiktionary's NHK-aligned 赤い entry; the negative analysis from Tatsumoto 2024.¹⁴⁷

Na-adjective patterns

Why na-adjectives are accent-different

Na-adjectives are not a verb-style binary system. Their stems behave like nouns prosodically. Each na-adjective stem carries one of the four noun patterns (heiban, atamadaka, nakadaka, odaka). The inflection is supplied by the copula だ / な / だった / に, which has its own pitch behavior.^13161718

Stem	Class	Contour
綺麗きれい	atamadaka, accent 1	[kíꜜrèè] HꜜLL 16
元気げんき	atamadaka, accent 1	[géꜜǹkì] HꜜLL 17
静しずか	atamadaka, accent 1	[shíꜜzùkà] HꜜLL 18

The four-pattern stem accent is what differentiates one na-adjective from another, not a verb-style binary. A truly heiban na-adjective stem (analogous to 赤い for i-adjectives) is rarer among short stems than among long stems.¹⁷

+ だ, + に, + な, + だった

The rules for each attaching element are synthesized from Kawahara 2015 §11.4, Wikipedia, and the Wiktionary per-form pitch tables for 綺麗 and 元気:¹³¹⁶¹⁷

• + だ: だ is generally L and attaches as a final L mora. For an atamadaka stem the contour is stem-H, then a tail of L through だ. 静かだ: [shíꜜzùkàdà] HꜜLLL.¹⁸
• + に: に is L and attaches without changing the stem's contour. 静かに: [shíꜜzùkànì] HꜜLLL.¹⁸
• + な: な carries a high to the following noun's first mora; the stem-internal kernel is preserved. 静かな + 場所 → [shíꜜzùkànà bàshó]. Here, な functions as a clitic high, a bound element that resets the contour for the modified noun.¹³
• + だった: patterns like the verbal た-past in shape: stem contour preserved, suffix L. 静かだった: [shíꜜzùkàdàttà] HꜜLLLL.¹⁸

For heiban na-adjective stems, all four attaching elements preserve the flat contour, modulo the kernel-on-following-mora behavior of な in attributive position.¹³

The では / じゃない negative

The negative では ない / じゃ ない breaks the once-low rule for the same reason -kunai does on i-adjectives: ない is atamadaka and supplies its own kernel.³⁷

静しずかではない。¹⁸⁷
"It is not quiet."

The contour is [shíꜜzùkà dèwà náꜜì]: stem-internal kernel on し, then the contour falls to L through ではない until the な of ない, which is H and drops to い. The result has two H peaks, one on the stem and one on ない, exactly as in the i-adjective negative.

The Tatsumoto primer phrases the rule as "dictionary form + では (low) + nakadaka ない."⁷ The "nakadaka" label there appears to be a slip: both Wikipedia and the Wiktionary per-form tables treat the negative ない as accent 1 / atamadaka.^3161718

Worked example E: an accented na-adjective (きれい) and an unaccented one (健康)

The accented stem きれい is atamadaka, accent 1. The second い in 綺麗 is the second half of a long vowel /ee/, so the stem is three morae [kí-re-e] with the kernel on き. Some learner dictionaries treat きれい as four morae with the kernel on き. The contour [kíꜜrèè] HꜜLL is identical either way.¹⁶

Form	Kana	Pitch contour	Notes
+ だ	きれいだ	[kíꜜrèèdà] HꜜLLL	da attaches as final L
+ に	きれいに	[kíꜜrèènì] HꜜLLL	adverbial; flat after kernel
+ な (+ noun)	きれいな (+ X)	[kíꜜrèènà X]	な is a high clitic on the following noun
+ だった	きれいだった	[kíꜜrèèdàttà] HꜜLLLL	past; flat after kernel
+ ではない	きれいではない	[kíꜜrèè dèwà náꜜì]	two domains: stem + atamadaka ない

綺麗きれいじゃない。⁹¹⁶⁷
"It is not pretty."

The unaccented contrast uses a heiban stem such as 健康 (けんこう), accent 0 / heiban, [kèńkóó] LHHH per the standard NHK reference.⁹

Form	Kana	Pitch contour	Notes
+ だ	けんこうだ	[kèńkóódá] LHHHH	flat
+ に	けんこうに	[kèńkóóní] LHHHH	flat
+ な (+ noun)	けんこうな (+ X)	[kèńkóónà X]	flat through な, then the noun's own pattern
+ ではない	けんこうではない	[kèńkóó dèwà náꜜì]	only the negative breaks flat

The heiban stem stays flat across だ, に, and な. Only the negative breaks flat, and only because ない supplies its own kernel.⁷

元気げんきな人ひと。⁹¹⁷
"A cheerful person."

部屋へやが静しずかだ。⁹¹⁸
"The room is quiet."

Good to know

The ます override flattens the binary

The ます-form imposes the same kernel-on-ま contour on every verb regardless of class. A learner who drills polite Japanese exclusively hears the ます override every time and never has to distinguish 食べる (accented) from 行く (unaccented) by ear.²⁶⁷

The wrong inference is "ます makes every verb sound the same, so the binary class doesn't matter in speech." The right inference is that ます masks the binary in one specific conjugation. The plain form, the te-form, the ta-form, and the ない-form all expose it. To fix this, practise plain forms and ない-forms first, where the binary surfaces, before drilling ます-form for politeness.

食たべる²
"to eat (plain form: accented [tàbéꜜrù], drop audible)."

Potential, passive, and causative collapse the source class

The derived forms -eru / -rareru, -(r)areru, -(s)aseru re-accent to the penultimate independent mora regardless of the source verb's class.¹²⁶ Long polite causatives sound nearly identical across very different verbs. 食べさせます and 行かせます both end the same way past the stem boundary, and the underlying class is recoverable only from the plain form.

The wrong inference is "I learned the binary class for the dictionary form, so I can predict all conjugations." The right inference is more conditional: the binary class predicts plain, て, た, and ない. Potential, passive, and causative all re-accent. ます and ば override.

I-adjective negatives are not verbal negatives

The i-adjective negative -kunai is not symmetric with verbal -nai.³⁷ Verbal たべない is one prosodic word with the kernel on the mora before な. I-adjective たかくない is two prosodic units (the ku-form plus an atamadaka ない) with two H peaks.

高たかくない¹⁵⁷
"not expensive (contour: [tàkáꜜkù náꜜì], two H peaks)."

A learner who treats the i-adjective negative as a single-domain verbal-style negative will produce a single-peak contour and sound off. Memorize the negative as "ku-form, pause, atamadaka ない." The rest falls out.

有核 / 無核 names the kernel as the moving object

The Japanese pedagogy labels 有核 (yūkaku, "has kernel") and 無核 (mukaku, "no kernel") name the kernel (the mora before the downstep) as the object that the lexicon stores and that conjugation moves.⁴ This is more precise than the English "accented / unaccented." The English binary describes the word as a whole. The Japanese binary describes the presence of a kernel, and the operation that conjugation performs is exactly "move the kernel" (or "leave the form kernelless"). The 有核 / 無核 terminology makes that operation legible.¹⁴

起伏式 and 平板式 are the umbrella terms

起伏式 (kifukushiki, "rise-and-fall type") is the umbrella term for any accented pattern in Haraguchi 1999 and in the Akinaga dictionary tradition.¹⁹⁴ 平板式 (heibanshiki, "flat type") is the umbrella term for the unaccented pattern. For verbs and adjectives, the four noun pattern labels (atamadaka, nakadaka, odaka) reduce to 起伏式 vs. 平板式 because verbs and adjectives only distinguish "has kernel" from "no kernel." The surface label (atamadaka, nakadaka) for a verb is just a description of where the penultimate-mora rule placed the kernel in the dictionary form, not a lexical class.¹⁴

See also

• Should You Learn Pitch Accent? An Honest Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Japanese Pitch-Accent Minimal Pairs: The Drill List You Must Hear
• Japanese Compound-Word Pitch Accent: How Two Words Combine into One Accent Pattern
• Regional Pitch Accent in Japanese: Kansai (Keihan), Tohoku, and the Accentless Dialects
• Stress vs. Pitch: Does Japanese Have Stress?
• Japanese Adjectives Overview: The Two Classes (い-形容詞 vs な-形容詞)

References

Footnotes

1. Kawahara, Shigeto. "The Phonology of Japanese Accent." Chapter 11 in Haruo Kubozono (ed.), Handbook of Japanese Phonetics and Phonology, De Gruyter Mouton, 2015. https://user.keio.ac.jp/~kawahara/pdf/HandbookAccentPublished.pdf ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³² ↩³³ ↩³⁴ ↩³⁵ ↩³⁶ ↩³⁷ ↩³⁸ ↩³⁹ ↩⁴⁰ ↩⁴¹ ↩⁴² ↩⁴³ ↩⁴⁴ ↩⁴⁵ ↩⁴⁶ ↩⁴⁷ ↩⁴⁸ ↩⁴⁹ ↩⁵⁰

2. Wiktionary. "食べる." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%A3%9F%E3%81%B9%E3%82%8B (Tokyo accent and per-conjugation pitch table derived from NHK 2016 and OJAD; cited here for per-form pitch verification of the accented worked verb.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹ ↩³² ↩³³ ↩³⁴ ↩³⁵

3. "Japanese pitch accent." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent (tertiary cross-check; primary references therein are Vance 2008, Kawahara 2015, Shin Meikai Nihongo Akusento Jiten, and NHK Nihongo Hatsuon Akusento Jiten.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

4. Haraguchi, Shosuke. "Accent." Chapter 1 in Tsujimura, Natsuko (ed.), The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, Blackwell, 1999. https://www.blackwellpublishing.co.uk/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_chapter/0631205047/001.pdf (cited only for the umbrella-term 起伏式 / 平板式 terminology and the historical antepenultimate-default analysis of verb accent.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

5. Vance, Timothy J. The Sounds of Japanese. Cambridge University Press, 2008. (Standard reference book on Tokyo Japanese phonology; cited within Kawahara 2015 as the source for the citation-form indistinguishability observation and for the verb-class generalization summarised in §11.4.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

6. Wiktionary. "行く." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%A1%8C%E3%81%8F (Tokyo accent 0 / heiban; cited here for per-form pitch verification of the unaccented worked verb.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴

7. Tatsumoto Ren. "Japanese Pitch Accent Primer." Neocities. https://tatsumoto.neocities.org/blog/japanese-pitch-accents (limitation: community pedagogy site; cited only for the i-adjective negative analysis as "ku-form plus atamadaka ない" and the ます-override generalization, both of which are summary-level claims consistent with NHK 2016 and OJAD.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹

8. Online Japanese Accent Dictionary (OJAD). Minematsu Laboratory and Saito Laboratory, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. https://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ojad/eng/pages/home ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

9. NHK放送文化研究所 (ed.). 『NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典』. NHK出版, 2016. ISBN 978-4-14-011345-5. Publisher product page: https://www.monokakido.jp/en/dictionaries/nhkaccent2/index.html ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

10. Wiktionary. "書く." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%9B%B8%E3%81%8F (Tokyo accent 1 / atamadaka for 書く; cited here as a secondary accented two-mora verb confirmation.) ↩ ↩²

11. Nakamura, Ibuki; Minematsu, Nobuaki; Suzuki, Masayuki; Hirano, Hiroko; Nakagawa, Chieko; Nakamura, Noriko; Tagawa, Yukinori; Hirose, Keikichi; Hashimoto, Hiroya. "Development of a Web Framework for Teaching and Learning Japanese Prosody: OJAD (Online Japanese Accent Dictionary)." Interspeech 2013. https://www.isca-archive.org/interspeech_2013/nakamura13_interspeech.html ↩ ↩²

12. Wiktionary. "帰る." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B8%B0%E3%82%8B (Tokyo accent 1 / atamadaka; cited for the antepenultimate-mora exception class noted by Vance 2008.) ↩ ↩² ↩³

13. k3zi. "Tips for Japanese Pitch Accent." GitHub Gist. https://gist.github.com/k3zi/3f38070efffa38db83cd5745d83b1235 (limitation: community cheat sheet; cited only where it gives the compact contour template per conjugation, consistent with OJAD output.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

14. Wiktionary. "赤い." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%B5%A4%E3%81%84 (Tokyo accent 0 / heiban i-adjective; cited for the unaccented worked i-adjective.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

15. Wiktionary. "高い." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%AB%98%E3%81%84 (Tokyo accent 2 / accented i-adjective; cited for per-form verification of the worked i-adjective.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²

16. Wiktionary. "綺麗." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B6%BA%E9%BA%97 (Tokyo accent 1 / atamadaka, surface contour [kíꜜrèè] for きれい; cited as the accented na-adjective example.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

17. Wiktionary. "元気." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%85%83%E6%B0%97 (Tokyo accent 1 / atamadaka, [géꜜǹkì]; cited as the second worked na-adjective.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

18. Wiktionary. "静か." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%9D%99%E3%81%8B (Tokyo accent 1 / atamadaka, [shíꜜzùkà]; cited as a third na-adjective cross-check.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

19. 金田一春彦 監修; 秋永一枝 編. 『新明解日本語アクセント辞典』第2版. 三省堂, 2014. (First edition 1981 ed. Akinaga; standard Sanseidō pitch-accent reference cited alongside the NHK dictionary in the linguistic literature.) ↩