Фразовая просодия двух восточных среднерусских говоров

This paper deals with the phrase intonation of two neighboring Eastern Middle-Russian dialects with okan’je and akan’je spoken in Melenki and Gus’-Khrustal’ny districts of Vladimir region. The study, based on the material of dialectal speech recordings made in the 2008 and 2009 (nine speakers born in 1914–1940, total duration — 19 hours), reveals that the prosodic system of these dialects is relatively similar to that one of the Modern Standard Russian, sharing with it most pitch accents (L*, H*+L, L*+H) and association of tonal structures with the basic communicative categories — statements, yes-no questions, wh-question, non-finality, commands and requests. The main distinctive properties of the Vladimir dialect as compared to Standard Russian are: 1) phonological distinction between two rising pitch accents — L*+H and L+H*; 2) probable H* pitch accents in dialects with akan’je; 3) “falling set-up” on pretonic syllable for rising pitch accents; 4) earlier timing of rising L*+H and falling H*+L pitch accents; 5) phonological distinction between two initial boundary tones — %L and %H; 6) the wide distribution of falling final boundary tone HL%; 7) some traces of ‘word-to-word’ tonal prominence. Meanwhile, the difference between the two Vladimir dialects themselves is not that noticeable and lies in the domain of phonetic realization and the degree of manifestation of particular elements of prosodic structure, as well as in the degree of their prevalence rather than in the set of prosodic units. DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2023.1.05Статья посвящена исследованию интонационной системы в соседних акающем и окающем восточных среднерусских говорах Меленковского и Гусь-Хрустального районов Владимирской области на материале записей 2008 и 2009 г. общей длительностью 19 часов. Результаты исследования фразовой просодии владимирских говоров дают основания для утверждения о том, что в целом просодическая система говоров близка литературной как в отношении наличия сходных тональных акцентов (L*, H*+L, L*+H), так и в плане интонационного оформления базовых коммуникативных категорий — утверждения, общего и частного вопроса, незавершенности, императива. Основные ее отличия от литературной заключаются 1) в наличии специфического восходящего тонального акцента L+H*, используемого для оформления утвердительных и императивных высказываний; 2) в наличии, как минимум, в прошлом тонального акцента Н* (в акающих говорах); 3) реализации восходящих тональных акцентов с отрицательным заносом (понижением частоты основного тона на предударном гласном); 4) более раннем тайминге восходящего L*+H и нисходящего H*+L тональных акцентов; 5) регулярном использовании высокого начального пограничного тона; 6) широком распространении нисходящего конечного пограничного тона (HL%); 7) наличии следов «пословного» тонального оформления высказывания. При этом различия между акающим и окающим говорами минимальны и заключаются не в наборе тональных фонологических средств, а в характере фонетической реализации и степени выраженности фонологических контрастов, а также в степени распространенности тех или иных просодических явлений. DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2023.1.0

How Truncating Are ‘Truncating Languages'? Evidence from Russian and German

Russian and German have been previously been described as ‘truncating‘, or cutting off target frequencies of the phrase-final pitch trajectories when the time available for voicing is compromised. However, supporting evidence is rare and limited to only a few pitch categories. This paper reports a production study conducted to document pitch adjustments to linguistic materials, in which the amount of voicing available for the realization of a pitch pattern varies from relatively long to extremely short. Productions of nuclear H+L*, H* and L*+H pitch accents followed by a low boundary tone were investigated in the two languages. The results of the study show that speakers of both ‘truncating languages’‘ do not exclusively utilize truncation exclusively when accommodating to different segmental environments. On the contrary, they employ several strategies – among them is truncation but also compression and temporal re-alignment –to produce the target pitch categories under increasing time pressure. Given that speakers can systematically apply all three adjustment strategies to produce some pitch patterns (H* L% in German and Russian) while not using truncation in others (H+L* L% particularly in Russian), we question the effectiveness of the typological classification of these two languages as ‘truncating’. Moreover, the phonetic detail of truncation varies considerably, both across and within the two languages, indicating that truncation cannot be easily be modeled as a unified phenomenon. The results further suggest that the phrase-final pitch adjustments are crucially sensitive to the phonological composition of the tonal string and the status of a particular tonal event (associated vs. boundary tone), and do not apply to falling vs. rising pitch contours across the board, as previously put forward for German. Implications for the intonational phonology and prosodic typology are addressed in the discussion

Intonation structure and intonation in Svo and Ovs sentences in spoken Russian

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the difference between SVO and OVS sentences in spoken Russian, which is a language with flexible word order although the basic order is SVO. Two experiments were conducted to understand the nature of intonation. Experiment 1 shows that the Subject appears as kontrast in OVS sentences, and as background in SVO sentences. The F0 curve rises in the Object position when the Subject is kontrast in OVS sentences. The analysis of the results of Experiment 2 shows that the initial element of the sentence plays an important role in intonation. When it is kontrasted, it always has higher (Hz) frequency pitch accent than the final element. There is no difference between SVO and OVS sentences in this respect because the initial element has high pitch accent, whether it is the Subject or the Object. The verb has no pitch accent and it has a flat intonation regardless of the WO of the sentence (SVO, OVS).M.S. - Master of Scienc