Phrase prosody of three Voronezh dialects: Russian and Ukranian

This paper deals with the phrase intonation of three neighbouring dialects in Voronezh region spoken by the eldest dictors (born in 1915–1939): the Russian idiom of Krasnolipye (Repyevsky district), the Ukranian dialect of Kolodezhnoe (Podgorensky district) and the Russian one of Tatarino (Kamensky district), the latter one being surrounded by Ukranian dialects.

The study reveals similarity across these dialects in relation to the intonation of statements with broad (presentational) focus — all of them utilize the %H L* L% melodic contour in this type of utterances. The Russian idioms, in their turn, differ from the Ukranian dialect in that they display phonological opposition between two falling tonal accents — the H*+L (wh-questions) and H+L* (narrow focus statements), whereas in Kolodezhnoe only one falling pitch accent H*+L is found (with later timing as compared to the corresponding accent of Krasnolipye and Tatarino). The dialect of Tatarino is clearly distinguished from the other two by more rare usage of the high level tune H* and by the utilization of the %H L* H- L% melodic contour for non-neutral utterances of any type (yes/no questions, wh-questions, broad focus statements). The Krasnolipye dialect in regard to its intonational system is closest of the three to the neighboring idiom of Rogovatoe in which mainly level tunes (H* and L*) are attested, but at the same time differs from it considerably in that it uses the falling and the rising tonal accents; nevertheless, the high level tone is used in Krasnolipye more frequently than in Tatarino and Kolodezhnoe. To sum up, the data studied do not prove our initial hypothesis about the probable significant influence of the Ukranian phrase prosody on the Russian sentence intonation.