dc.description.abstract | The present article presents some preliminary results of the study of
some prosodic characteristics of the dialects of Varzuga and Umba, two
Northern Russian villages on the Ter Coast of the White Sea. In our recently
collected recordings, we observed a number of prosodic characteristics
which are assumed to be typical for Northern Russian. Firstly,
vowels appear to be relatively short. Secondly, it was often rather
difficult to determine the location of the stressed syllables. Thirdly, a
tendency to attach a repeating prosodic pattern to each phonological
word was observed. Finally, many non-question utterances ended in a
rising pitch movement, although the steepness and the height of the Ter
rise appear to be less extreme than in, for instance, some Pinega dialects
of the Archangel’sk oblast’. Interestingly, the second and third characteristics
seem to be closely related. In all but one of the cases with unclear
stress patterns, the first syllable was realised with high pitch,
immediately preceded and followed by low pitch. This seems to be the
result of a tendency to attach a rising-falling pattern to each phonological
word. | en |