The Phonetic and Phonological Analysis of the Fall-Rise Intonation Pattern in the Kihnu Variety of Estonian
The Phonetic and Phonological Analysis of the Fall-Rise Intonation Pattern in the Kihnu Variety of Estonian

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents an analysis of fall-rise intonation patterns in the Kihnu dialect of Estonian. The study is based on recordings of spontaneous speech from three generations of female speakers. Fall-rises occurred almost five times less frequently in the data of the speakers born around 1935 as compared to those born around 1900. The data of the speakers born after 1970 did not contain any fall-rises at all, which could be interpreted as a sign of prosodic levelling of the traditional variety. An investigation of F0 alignment revealed a systematic variation in the location of high and low tonal targets. The peaks were aligned significantly later in the case of longer phrases. The first low elbow was aligned either with the accented syllable (in monosyllabic and disyllabic words) or with the syllable following the accented syllable (in longer words and phrases), and the second low elbow with the final syllable of the phrase just before the high ­boundary. These findings lend support to the treatment of the fall-rise accent as H*L H% in accordance with the autosegmental-metrical analysis of Estonian intonation.

• Details
• Contents