Eestirootsi keele prosoodia tunnusjooni

• Authors: Asu Eva Liina

Title variants

EN

SOME FEATURES OF ESTONIAN SWEDISH PROSODY

• Languages of publication: ET

Abstracts

EN

Estonian Swedish was traditionally spoken on the western coast and islands of Estonia. Nowadays, it is almost extinct, surviving only as a language of occasional communication of some elderly speakers who emigrated from Estonia to Sweden as children during World War II. Estonian Swedish is a typologically interesting variety of Swedish, as it retains a number of archaic segmental features (e.g. Old Scandinavian diphthongs) and has been influenced by its most important contact language, Estonian. The article addresses such aspects of Estonian Swedish prosody as word accents and rhythm. An investigation of the realisation of tonal accents in disyllabic words showed that Estonian Swedish (like Finland Swedish) lacks the lexical pitch accent distinction that is characteristic of Standard Swedish. A comparative study of rhythm in read speech explored the hypothesis that Estonian Swedish may be intermediate between Swedish (as represented by Central Swedish from the Stockholm area) and Estonian. The results showed, however, that the durational values of Estonian Swedish rhythm are very similar to those of Central Swedish.

Keywords

EN

prosody; word tones; rhythm; Swedish; varieties of Estonian Swedish

• Publisher: Folk Belief and Media Group of the Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian Institute of Folklore, EKM Teaduskirjastus
• Journal: Mäetagused
• Year: 2017
• Volume: 68
• Pages: 9-26

Contributors

author

Asu Eva Liina

• Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, University of Tartu, Jakobi 2-409, Tartu 51014, ESTONIA