Post-Nuclear Prominence Patterns in Northern Russian Question Intonation

In the intonation of polar questions in the Northern Russian dialect of Varzuga (Kola Peninsula), two different intonation patterns are frequently used: the Standard Russian H*L pitch accent, with a high rise and immediate fall, but also a “broad hat” pattern, in which the high rise is followed by a late fall, aligned to the first syllable after the last lexical stress. This contour does not fit into the existing transcription systems developed for Standard Russian. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that the late fall does not present a fullyfledged pitch accent, but is subordinate to the preceding, nuclear accent, similar to phrase accents in the sense of [4].