Are there any general rules for guessing the pitch accent of 1- or 2- mora nouns in compounds?


I've already looked up here but so far most are only concerned with 3 or 4
mora suffixes or are overly specific. I'm looking for a generic rule I can
apply for compound suffixes made up of 1 to 2 morae.

An example of what I want to predict would be か\んしゃ ＝＝＞かんしゃ\さい and け\いざい ＝＝＞
けいざいき\ぼ andしゅ\と＝＝＞しゅと\けん and せ\いび ＝＝＞ せいびほ\う.




<https://www.coelang.tufs.ac.jp/mt/ja/pmod/practical/02-07-01.php>

This website presents an simple overview of accent in noun+noun compounds.
When the second element has 1 or 2 morae, accent nucleus would be the last
mora of first element (in most cases) or nowhere (with certain suffixes).

This accounts for かんしゃ\さい and しゅと\けん, but けいざいき\ぼ is an exception. I'm not
sure about せいびほ\う, but if you intend 整備法, it is pronounced as せいびほう= (heiban
accent), which follows the rule presented.

I hope this helps.




Timothy Vance, in An Introduction to Japanese Phonology, makes the following
observation at the end of his chapter on accent: 'There seem to be relatively
straight-forward regularities in verb + verb and adjective + adjective
compounds, but noun + noun compounds do not show any simple pattern.' For
detailed discussion of the problem he refers to:

Akinaga, K (1966:50-54) 共通語のアクセント In 日本放送協会 (1966, 45-90)

Okuda, K. (1971:183-277) Accentual Systems in the Japanese Dialects, UCLA
doctoral dissertation.

Higurashi, Y. (1983:59-77) The Accent of Extended Word Structures in Tokyo
Japanese. Tokyo, Educa.

McCawley, J. (1977:268-272) Accent in Japanese. In, Hyman, L. M. (ed.) (1977)
Studies in Stress and Accent (SCOPIL 4), University of Southern California
Department of Linguistics.

Samuel Martin, Reference Grammar of Japanese, also treats the problem to some
extent.

