Is every word in every conversation between native speakers spoken with a perceivable pitch accent?

In English, no matter how careless and sloppy a conversation gets, the word “tomorrow” is always pronounced with stress on the second syllable, so I’m tempted to assume the same to be true for Japanese and pitch accent.

But is that really true? I’m on a quest to perceive pitch accent as well as I can and I often find myself thinking that whole words were just spoken completely flat even when I clearly hear their accents in other sentences. To give some examples, consider this website: http://tell.cla.purdue.edu/hatasa/j-accent/unit-04.html

てがいたい: the pitch accent on てが is super clear but I perceive it as though he pronounced いたい completely flat; it should be いた↓い

。。。いきます: I have the same issue with all the examples with いきます, namely that I don’t perceive the first two morae い and き to be of different pitch. The rule is that the first two morae always differ in pitch (いきます has the downstep on す, so it should be L H H L) but I don’t hear this at all.

I could go on about more of the examples but I think these two points already demonstrate my issue quite well.

My questions:

Do others hear the prescriptively correct pitch accent for いたい (L H L) and いきます (L H H L) in the given audio files?

Is every word in every conversation between native speakers spoken with a perceivable pitch accent?

1 comment
  1. I’m pretty sure everyday conversations is 100% not. Like how in English you’re taught how to ask a question with CAN I have…..?
    Instead I hear I can have a…? They just know through context.

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