MELODIC CONTOUR OF YES-NO QUESTION IN WESTERN MIDDLE-RUSSIAN DIALECT WITH AKAN’JE PART II: PSKOV DIALECT

Abstract

This paper deals with the intonation of yes-no question in Western Middle-Russian dialect with akan’je spoken in Ostrov district of Pskov region. The study, based on the material of dialectal speech recordings made in the 2014 (eight speakers born in 1930-1945, total duration - 12 hours), reveals that the melodic contour of yes-no question in Western Middle-Russian dialect occupies an intermediate position between corresponding tonal structures of Modern Standard Russian and those of Northern Russian dialects: while sharing rising pitch associated with the accented syllable and falling tone on the postaccented ones, it differs 1) from the Standard Russian owing to earlier timing of the pitch accent (with the maximum tonal point around the middle of the stressed vowel rather than at the end of the stressed syllable for the Standard variety) and the absence of truncation of the falling tune and 2) from the Northern one - due to the absence of high phrase tone on postaccented syllables. The difference with Eastern Middle-Russian dialects with okan’je lays in the domain of pretonic syllable which bears a ‘falling set-up’. Pskov dialect differs from the neighboring Seliger-Torzhok idiom in the higher frequency of an extra-early timing an in regular lack of the low phrase accent. We thus suggest the interpretation of %L (L+)H* (L-) L% for the melodic contour in Pskov Middle-Russian dialect with akan’je.