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Peter Houtzagers, Slavic
Department,
University of
Groningen
contact: h.p.houtzagers "at"
rug.nl
LENGTH AND TONE IN
CROATIAN DIALECTS:
SOUND
SAMPLES
What and why
This web page contains sound fragments from two sites that belong to the dialect area traditionally called 'Burgenland Croatian' (gradišćanskohrvatski), one in the extreme north and one in the extreme south (see the map):
(1) the dialect of the Moravian Croats (abbreviated "MC"; indicated by the black triangles on the map);
(2) the Croatian dialect of Petrovo Selo near Szombathely in Hungary (abbreviated "PS"; the southeasternmost black triangle on the map).
The fragments have been taken
from sound files recorded during my fieldwork in the summer of 2008. The
reason for publishing these sound fragments on the internet is that there
is no consensus among Croatian dialectologists as to whether these dialect
have a tone opposition. Regarding the dialect of the Moravian Croats, there is also no consensus as to whether there is a length opposition in the first
posttonic syllable.In my opinion, these oppositions are present, but they are not always easy to hear. I arranged the sound
fragments in a specific way that will be explained below, hoping that it
would make it easier for the listener to distinguish the tones and
lengths. In any case, the availability of the fragments on the internet
will make it possible for more colleagues and other interested people to
form their own opinion on the matter of the accentual distinctions in the
dialects.
This web page was announced in an article of
which I am the author and that appeared in Scando-Slavica
55
(2009) pp. 147-165: "On the dialect of the Moravian Croats". In that article you will
find a description of themain characteristics of
the dialect of the Moravian Croats within the context of Burgenland Croatian. Information on the dialect of Petrovo Selo can be found in my article "The Croatian dialect of Petrovo Selo near Szombathely", Studia Slavica Academiae Scientiarium Hungaricae 56/2 (2011).
Accentual distinctions
and their notation on this web page
The dialects have a length distinction on stressed
vowels (short vs. long) and a tonal distinction (rising vs.falling) on
long stressed vowels. In other words there is a three-way distinction
(troakcenatski sistem) in stressed syllables:
(a) short,
(b) long and falling,
(c) long and rising.
The diacritics that are most commonly used in
Croatian dialectology for indicating tone and length in such cases are (in
Unicode terms, see http://unicode.org/)
(a) double grave,
(b) inverted breve,
(c) tilde.
Examples:
Because it is complicated to get the double grave and the inverted breve
right on the internet (the examples above are in jpg format), I have chosen to use the
well-known French accent signs on this page:
(a) grave (accent grave)
(b) circumflex (accent circonflexe)
(c) acute (accent aigu)
Examples: à, â, á.
There is a five
vowel system. The long mid vowels are realized as opening
diphthongs and will be written as such. Summarizing, we have a system in
which short
à, è,
ò, ì, ù are opposed to long falling
â, iê, uô, î,
û and long rising á, ié, uó, í, ú.
In addition, the dialects have a syllabic r. I am
not certain yet whether length and tone are distinctive on syllabic r
and in my notation I provisionally assume that they are not. Stress on syllabic r is indicated by a preceding grave, e.g.
b`rže 'quicker'.
The traditional
diacritic for indicating unstressed length is the macron (horizontal
dash): ā,ī, ū. Since for these combinations there do exist
html codes, I shall use the macron on this page.
Unstressed distinctive length occurs only in the first posttonic
syllable in the dialect of the Moravian Croats, in the first pretonic in the dialect of Petrovo Selo. The macron will be
written only on
monophthongs, because on diphthongs it would be redundant. Summarizing, in the first posttonic/pretonic
syllable short a, e, o,
i, u are opposed to
long ā,ie, uo, ī, ū.
Arrangement
Each sound file consists
of a number of attestations of the same word.* For instance, file MC1
contains 11 different realizations of the word Hrvâti 'Croat'
(nominative plural), pronounced by 3 different speakers, file MC2 contains 9
different realizations of hrvátski 'Croatian', pronounced by 4
different speakers. When listening to file MC1, one gets an acoustic picture
of the limits between which â varies within different circumstances
of sentence intonation. When after that one listens to file MC2, one gets an
acoustic picture of the variation of á, and it hopefully becomes
clear that, in all their variety, â and á are not the
same.
The realizations of the
forms in question are usually preceded and sometimes followed by some
text, so that the listener can get an impression of such factors as the
sentence intonation, speed, pitch, loudness, prominence, etc., which can
influence the actual acoustic form.
*Different forms of inflected words have been taken
together only when there is no reason to assume that they show accentual
differences. For the posttonic length opposition it was much more difficult
to find a sufficient number of attestations of exactly the same word-form in my material and I was forced to put together different lexemes.
I did my best to combine comparable word-forms, e.g. forms from different nouns but with the same grammatical ending, the same number of syllables, etc.
Remark on the phonetic realization of the tone distinction
In descriptions of Čakavian dialects,
discussions about whether or not a given
dialect has a tone distinction have often been obscured by the
expectation of many dialectologists that, if
there is a such a distinction, the rising tone should sound more or less
like the "Čakavian acute" described by Belić 1909 and Ivšić 1911. This "Čakavian acute" is characterized by a
sudden jump to a higher level of pitch and loudness. For many
dialectologists, the question whether or not there was a tonal
opposition was reduced to the question whether or not one could hear a "Čakavian
acute" of the type described here (for an analysis of this misunderstanding
and its possible consequences see Vermeer 1982: 304-309). However, the rising tone in Čakavian
dialects often has little in common with the "Čakavian acute". In
most Čakavian dialects with a tone distinction the rising tone is
better characterized as "level" than as "rising"
(see Langston 2006). This also holds for
the dialect of the Moravian Croats and that of Petrovo Selo.
Literature: Belić, A, 1909, "Zamětki po čakavskim
govoram", Izvestija Otdelenija russkogo jazyka i slovesnosti Akademii
nauk XIV-2, 181-266.
Ivšić, Stj., 1911, "Prilog za slavenski
akcenat", RadJAZU 187, 133-207.
Langston, Keith, 2006, Čakavian prosody, Bloomington.
Vermeer, Willem, 1982, "On the principal
sources for the study of
Čakavian dialects with neocircumflex in
adjective and e-presents", Studies in Slavic and General
Linguistics 2, 279-341.
Sound files
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control buttons of the embedded players below. Windows Media Player (6.4 or higher) must be installed on your
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downloadable files are in mp3 format.
The dialect of the Moravian Croats
Files MC 1-15: the three-way tone and length opposition
in stressed syllables
MC1. Long and falling a: Hrvâti (nominative plural) 'Croat'
sound file
MC2. Long and rising a: hrvátski 'Croatian'
sound file
Files PS16-25: the two-way length opposition in the first pretonic syllable
PS16. Long pretonic a: (available soon) sound file
PS17. Short pretonic a: (available soon) sound file
PS18. Long pretonic ie: (available soon) sound file
PS19. Short pretonic e: (available soon) sound file
PS20. Long pretonic uo: (available soon) sound file
PS21. Short pretonic o: (available soon) sound file
PS22. Long pretonic i: (available soon) sound file
PS23. Short pretonic i: (available soon) sound file
PS24. Long pretonic u: (available soon) sound file
PS25. Short pretonic u: (available soon) sound file
The pictures on this page were taken from Медынцева, А.А.: Древнерусские надписи
новгородского Софийского собора,1977, Москва. Both graffiti date from
between 1050 and 1112.
on the map); 
on the map). 
