The intonation of Saaremaa Estonian: in search of Swedish influence

Proceedings, FONETIK 2004, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm Universitydifference between the data of the two varieties(t(5) = 1.048; p>0.05).0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100location of peak (% of the accent unit)Figure 2. Normalized initial peak placement for thetwo varieties: Standard Estonian (dark gray bars),Saaremaa (light gray bars).Second peakFigure 3 displays the normalized location of thesecond peak expressed as a percentage of theaccent unit. In this case the peak is normalizedrelative to the length of the second accent unit(as measured from the onset of the /j/ sound inthe word Jaanusega (‘with Jaanus’) to the midpointmeasurement in the last unstressed vowel/a/). The data of two speakers (one from eachvariety) are omitted because, as a result of theabove-mentioned switch to low accentuation inthe course of the utterance, none of the secondaccent units in the data of these speakers wererealized as H*+L.Insufficient dataInsufficient dataStandardSaaremaaStandardSaaremaa0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100location of peak (% of the accent unit)Figure 3. Normalized second peak placement for thetwo varieties: Standard Estonian (dark gray bars)Saaremaa (light gray bars).The overall patterning of the data in Figure 3 issimilar to that of the first peak in Figure 2. Thealignment of the peaks of the Saaremaa speakersseems to be on the whole slightly later inthe accent unit than that of the Standard Estonianspeakers. However, a paired samples t-testfails to give a significant result between the twovarieties (t(3)= 1.783; p>0.05).Pitch heightMore striking than the slight difference in peakalignment between the two averaged contoursin Figure 1 is the difference in the height of initialpitch. In order to compare this difference ina reliable way the initial pitch height was expressedas a percentage of the span of an accentunit in relation to the F0 peak and the finalmeasurement in the accent unit. This was doneseparately for each accent unit.Figure 4 and Figure 5 show the results ofnormalized initial pitch for the two accentunits. On the whole, for both accent units, theinitial pitch is higher for the speakers of StandardEstonian than that for the Saaremaaspeakers.initial pitch (% of span)initial pitch (% of span)100806040200Figure 4. Normalized initial pitch in the first accentunit: Standard Estonian (dark gray bars), Saaremaa(light gray bars).100806040200Insufficient dataStandardStandardFigure 5. Normalized initial pitch in the second accentunit: Standard Estonian (dark gray bars),Saaremaa (light gray bars).Paired samples t-tests show that there is a significantdifference between the two varietieswith respect to the height of accent unit initialpitch (t(5) = -2.709; p