Phrase Prosody of Two Eastern Middle-Russian Dialects

Abstract

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.