Duration of the alveopalatal fricative [ɕ:] in Modern Russian

The article presents the results of a study on the articulation of [ɕ:] in Modern Russian
with the focus on its duration. The aim is to find out how significant deviations from the orthoepic
norm are in oral usage. Basing our investigation on oral material from the National
Corpus of the Russian Language, we analyze [ɕ:] in the following morpho-graphemic positions:
in cases of [ɕ:] represented graphically by the grapheme <щ>, (a) in alternating positions,
as in the comparative adverb čašče, and (b) in non-alternating positions, as in the words
veščʼ or ešče; in cases of bi- or polygraphemic representation of the sound, as in the word
mužčina. The study is complemented by an analysis of the positions C+[ɕ:]+V and V+[ɕ:]+V
as well as by a contrastive analysis of the fricatives [ɀ], [ȿ] and [͜tɕ].