Preliminaries to the Tuvan interrogative intonation

Abstract

Tuvan is one of the minority Turkic languages of Siberia (RF). Its segmental structure is described quite well, whereas its suprasegmental level has not been studied yet. The purpose of this paper is to give a preliminary description of the Tuvan interrogative intonation. Several topical dialogues were recorded by three Tuvan women, yes/no questions were cut out and their structure and F0 changes were analyzed. The preliminary results show that Tuvan intonation seems to closely correlate with the information structure. The interrogative particle be appears to be pronounced with different F0 movement in accordance with the utterance focus. Generally Tuvan yes/no questions prove to be characterized by inclination of the tone, though the patterns are not as strict as in Altay, for example.