The relationship between syntactic structure and prosodic structure has received increased theoretical attention in recent years. Richards (2010) proposes that Japanese allows wh-elements to stay in situ because of a certain aspect of its prosodic system. Specifically, in contrast to some other languages like English, Japanese can prosodically group wh-elements together with their licensers. This prosodic grouping is phonetically signaled by eradication or reduction of the lexical pitch accents of intervening words. In this theory, a question still remains as to whether each syntactic derivation is checked against its phonetic realization, or what allows Japanese wh-elements to stay in situ is more abstract phonological prosodic structure, whose phonetic manifestations can potentially be variable. This paper reports an experiment which addressed this question, by testing whether there is eradication or reduction of lexical pitch accents based on the detailed analysis of F0 contours. Our analysis makes use of a computational toolkit that allows us to assess the presence of tonal targets on a token-by-token basis. The results demonstrate that almost all speakers produce some wh-sentences which show reduction or eradication of the lexical pitch accents, as well as some that do not. Those tokens that show reduction or eradication directly support the prediction of Richards’ (2010) theory. The variability observed in the results suggests that the property of Japanese that allows their wh-elements to stay in situ must be abstract, phonological prosodic structure, whose phonetic realizations can vary within and across speakers. We discuss several possible mechanisms through which such phonetic variation can arise.

句法结构和韵律结构之间的关系近年来受到了越来越多的理论关注。理查兹（Richards，2010）提出，由于韵律系统的某些方面，日语允许白话元素留在原地。具体而言，与其他一些语言（例如英语）相比，日语可以将许可元素与Wh-elements一起分组。通过根除或减少中间单词的词汇音调重音，以语音方式表示此韵律分组。在这种理论中，仍然存在一个疑问，即是否要对照其语音实现来检查每个句法派生，或者是什么使日语wh元素停留在原地，而是更为抽象的语音韵律结构，其语音表现形式可能会发生变化。本文通过对F0轮廓的详细分析，测试是否消除或减少了词汇音高重音，从而报告了解决此问题的实验。我们的分析利用了计算工具包，该工具包允许我们逐个令牌地评估音调目标的存在。结果表明，几乎所有说话者都会产生一些减少或消除词汇音调重音的句子，而有些没有。那些显示减少或消除的代币直接支持理查兹（2010）理论的预测。结果中观察到的变异性表明，日语的允许其原音留在原处的特性必须是抽象的语音韵律结构，其语音实现在说话者内和说话者之间会有所不同。