Phrase prosody of a Southern Russian dialect: Rogovatoe

This paper deals with the phrase intonation of the Southern Russian dialect spoken in the village of Rogovatoe, in the Starooskol’sky district of the Belgorod region. The study is devoted to the analysis of the prosodic structure of various communicative categories: statements, yes-no questions, wh-questions, non-finality, imperative, and vocative. Based on the examination of more than 7000 sentences, I argue that the dialect of Rogovatoe uses only two monotonal pitch accents — H* and L* — as opposed to three bitonal accents of Modern Standard Russian. I also postulate two final boundary tones — H% and L% — for this dialect, while no proof of a phonological distinction between the high and the low phrase accents was found. Finally, the idiom of Rogovatoe employs the phonological distinction between the high and the low initial boundary tone — %H and %L. Therefore, the prosodic system of this Southern Russian dialect is much more focused on the level tones than Modern Standard Russian utilizing predominantly contour (rising and falling) tones.