Segmental duration in nuclear and post-nuclear syllables in Russian

Abstract

In this paper, we compared the durational patterns of two types of nuclei: $HL^*$ (used to signal contrast in addresses, exclamations, etc.) and $H^*L$ (used in yes/no questions and non-final phrases), for which the role of the post-nucleus is different. In a laboratory experiment with the target word “Natasha” placed in different contexts, we found that the two types of nuclei differ in the duration of both the stressed and post-stressed syllable. The stressed syllable is longer in $HL^*$, while the post-stressed vowel is significantly longer for $H^*L$, where the post-nucleus plays a greater role. However, this only holds true when the target word occurs phrase-finally. If the nucleus occurs phrase-medially, the temporal difference between $HL^*$ and $H^*L$ is much weaker.