AKUSTIČKE POSEBNOSTI AKUTA U ČAKAVSKOM, KAJKAVSKOM I STAROŠTOKAVSKOM GOVORU
THE ACOUSTIC DIVERSITY OF THE “ACUTE” RISING TONE IN ČAKAVIAN, KAJKAVIAN AND OLDŠTOKAVIAN DIALECTS

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary prosody in Croatian dialects possesses three different rising tones: “long rising”, “short rising” (which evolves from the former diachronically), and “acute” which is older. The acute appears mostly in Čakavian dialects, but is also present in Old Štokavian and some Kajkavian dialects. It is variously known as: “neoacute”; “new acute”; “čakavian acute”; “Posavina acute”; and “twisted”. The acute occurs on stressed long syllables; its main distinction from the other two rising tones is that it is produced in one syllable, while in long and short rising tones the high tone is spread over two syllables. Therefore, the acute can occur in monosyllabic words, as well in the last syllable of a word. The other difference between the acuteand the other rising tonesis its tone contour: Štokavian rising tones have a mostly flat frequency contouron the two neighboring syllables (therefore the rising tone would better suit the description “high tone”), while the acute has been described as “jump rising”. This description of the acute has been made mostly through listeners’ perceptions. In this paper we analyze phonetic realizations of the acute tone in recordings of Old Čakavian dialects (from Pitve and Pučišća), in Kajkavian dialects (from Đurđevac and Molve) and in Old Štokavian dialects (from Bački Monoštor, Stari Mikanovci and Gundinci). From speech recordings we extracted words with realizations of the acute, which were then auditorily verified by a dialectological expert. For further acoustic analysis, we selected words with the least influence of sentence intonation on the lexical tone. In the vowel with acute tone we analyzed frequency direction, frequency range and duration as well as the tone level of the post-accented syllable, where present. The analysis shows variability in acute realization within speakers, and within dialects. In Čakavian and Old Štokavian dialects the post-accented syllable can be low or high, whereas in Kajkavian dialects it is mostly high. Tone contour in the stressed vowel varies: it can be realized as flat, falling, rising, or falling-rising tone contours.

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