Individual Characteristics of the Incompleteness Intonation Contour in Russian Spontaneous Speech

The aim of this study was to identify individual features of incompleteness intonation in spontaneous speech on the material of the Russian language. The objectives of this study included the auditory and instrumental analysis of the features of melodic contour implementations. The material of the study was records from the corpus of spontaneous speech of four male and female speakers in two age categories-from 20 to 30 and from 30 to 40 y.o. Wave Assistant was used for melodic contours analysis. The material was divided into speech units. Functionally significant units, false starts, and repetitions were considered to be separate units of speech since it was assumed that their melodic contours could also have individual properties. On the basis of the auditory and instrumental analysis for each unit, the type of an intonation model was determined according to the classification of N.B. Volskaya. The results of the analysis were recorded in the protocols. For each speaker (symbols M1>20, M2>30, F1>20 and F2>30 were introduced), diagrams illustrating the ratio of intonation models in the speech were obtained. The analysis revealed that in the material of speaker M1>20, the ratio of non-final completeness implementations is 19% and the ratio of model 11 with a phrase stress shift is 24 % of the number of all speech units. In his speech, there are few implementations of model 12 and model 13 (4% and 2% respectively), and, for explanations, he uses models 9a and 9b (4% and 2% respectively). While speaker M2>30 has no implementations of model 11 with a phrase stress shift, implementations of model 11 account for 42% of all speech units with incompleteness, the ratio of implementations of model 12 is 8%, the ratio of implementations of model 13 is 13%. Prominence is expressed using a large increase of the fundamental frequency. For explanations, model 9 is used (4%). There are a lot of implementations of the model of non-final completion (31% of all speech units) in the speech of the third speaker (F1>20). The ratio of implementations of model 11 with a phrase stress shift is 11%. For explanations, only model 9a (3%) is used, and there are a few implementations of 10 and 12a models (3%). The most popular intonation model in the speech of F2>30 is model 11 (the ratio of implementations is 61%; 11% of them with a phrase stress shift). Models 10 and 12a (13%) are second frequent. Unique combinations of implementations and their features make the speech individual. From the results, it can be concluded that the original assumption has been confirmed: suprasegmental characteristics (in particular, characteristics of the melodic contour) allow making a unique speech portrait of the speaker because speakers have individual features of intonation implementation.

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