I am trying to parse the pitch accent of the bolded phrase in the following sentence:
> 毎日、**たくさんの人が**秋夫の船にのります
The word たくさん has pitch taKUSAn, while the word 人 has pitch “hiTO” (with the “hi” devoiced). But according to prosody, the pitch of the full word (with particle) “たくさんの人が” comes out to “taKUSANNOHITOga”:
> [![taKUSANNOHITOga][1]][1]
It’s as if the whole phrase is odaka. Moreover, if I try to force prosody to parse the phrase as “taKUSAn no hiTO GA”, it gives me an error:
> [![Error: [たくさんの人が] has an incorect accent type labeling. Please correct.][2]][2]
Is prosody correct? If so, what’s going on?
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/YXweI.png
[2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/CEkSt.png
6 comments
In general, I’d say that sentence pitch overrides word pitch, especially when it’s being spoken at a natural pace–so my sense is that your program is right, but I’d be interested to hear if anyone disagrees.
Not sure about たくさん, IIRC it’s nakadaka as a noun and heiban as an adverb, so I would expect nakadaka here, but 人 is odaka when it’s modified.
As u/Zarlinosuke notes, this is starting to get into phrase/sentence-level pitch accent rules. Unfortunately, OJAD and other automatic tools aren’t really reliable in this area yet.
There are two phenomena at play here: the pitch accent of たくさんの and the pitch accent of 人. The latter is less complex, so let’s deal with that first.
人 is normally a 平板 word — i.e., ひと￣ in NHK notation. However, as u/whateveranywaylol notes, when qualified by an adjective or other attributive phrase, it becomes ○○ひと＼ — i.e., 尾高. Other words that follow this rule are 日（ひ）・上（うえ）・下（した）. So OJAD is correct in inserting a downstep after 人.
Now, onto たくさんの. の affects pitch accent in somewhat complex ways, and not all sources or speakers agree entirely on the rules here. Dogen presents a good synthesis of this topic in lessons 60-61 of his Patreon course, and you can consult the sources that he cites — e.g., the 新明解日本語アクセント辞典 — if you want to research more thoroughly. の _can_, in some cases, delete a downstep in the final _syllable_ (yes, syllable and not mora) of the previous word, which is why 日本の is often にほんの￣. This appears to be what OJAD is trying to apply.
**However**, most sources agree that downstep deletion cannot occur with counters or other nouns of quantity, and たくさん is specifically cited as an example. So this should be たくさ＼んの and not ×たくさんの￣.
Putting this all together, the pitch accent should be たくさ＼んの・ひと＼が.
Again, this is a fairly complicated topic, especially around the treatment of の.
Also, as a side note, OJAD is complaining in your second screenshot because you put a downstep on the particle が, which never occurs.
So, not an answer to your question really (I’m definitely a pitch accent beginner, though do remember learning somewhere that particles can change pitch accent occasionally), but when I’m worried about various voice synthesis tools, I always check YouGlish:
[https://youglish.com/getbyid/28111/%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8F%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%AE%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%8C/japanese](https://youglish.com/getbyid/28111/%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8F%E3%81%95%E3%82%93%E3%81%AE%E4%BA%BA%E3%81%8C/japanese)
Anyway, how it helps.
[変調練習動画（Tone Sandhi Practice?）](https://youtu.be/T8V0noBA-68?t=60)
According to this video, 人 is pronounced as odaka when there’s something attached to it.
たくさん is [0], I think.
It’s [3] when it’s used like, “もうたくさんだ.”
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人 is also [2] in cases like “たくさんの人.”
It’s [0] when it’s like, “人を呼び.”
​
I checked with a dictionary and it says the same thing 🙂