“Segmental Anchoring” of F0 Under Changes in Speech Rate: Evidence from Russian

This paper reports the results of an experiment, which investigates what properties of Russian rising pitch accents are constant under changes in segmental duration brought about by modifications of speech rate. To be more specific, the experiment is aimed at examining whether the “segmental anchoring” of F0 movements is observed in this language. By segmental anchoring, I mean the phenomenon firstly found in Modern Greek that both beginning and the end of a rising pitch accent are anchored to specific points in the segmental string, which is regarded as a support for the framework that analyzes intonational contour as consisting of primitive level tones. The results revealed that 1) the duration of F0 rise was not constant but it increases as rate slows, 2) both the beginning and the end of the rise are anchored with specific points in the segmental string, regardless of the changes in speech rate, 3) for some speakers, rate had those effects on F0 excursion which suggest that the slope is constant. The results, partially replicating the findings in a similar experiment for English, confirm the existence of segmental anchoring in Russian on the one hand, and support a view that a given type of pitch accent has a constant slope, on the other.