# Pitch accent speakers exhibit speech-to-song transformation accompanied by reduced musicality ratings: a cross-linguistic study

## TL;DR

This study finds that Japanese speakers perceive speech as musical similarly to Dutch and English speakers, but rate it as less song-like.

## Contribution

It shows that Japanese speakers experience the STS transformation but with reduced musicality ratings compared to other languages.

## Key findings

- Japanese speakers show a comparable STS transformation to Dutch and Hiberno-English speakers.
- Japanese speakers rate their native language stimuli as significantly less song-like.
- The results suggest a language-specific influence of pitch in Japanese.

## Abstract

The Speech-to-Song (STS) transformation is a phenomenon where repeated listening to speech sounds leads listeners to perceive them as increasingly musical. Previous research suggests that the STS transformation may be less pronounced for tonal language speakers when listening to speech in their native language. This study investigates whether a similar pattern is observed in speakers of Japanese, a pitch-accent language. The results reveal that native speakers of Japanese experience a degree of STS transformation comparable to that observed in Dutch and Hiberno-English speakers, yet show substantially lower overall songlikeness ratings for Japanese stimuli. We interpret these findings as consistent with a language-specific influence associated with Japanese. More broadly, the results contribute to our growing understanding that the function of pitch in one’s native language may play an important role in shaping how the effect manifests.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00426-026-02262-0.