Intonation of imperative statements of the Teleut language: 20th century and early 21st century

Abstract

Acoustic analysis of the intonation of imperative statements of the Teleut language revealed some patterns in the development of the Teleut intonation system. The new data were compared with those obtained by F. A. Kim when studying similar linguistic material. These patterns are in line with the science of language and are explained by the linguistic situation of the endangered Teleut language. Thus, the new tendencies can be seen in the pronunciation of bilingual speakers of a younger generation. In turn, the features described by F. A. Kim are more characteristic of the speech of the older generation speakers, who consider the Teleut language to be their native language. Each utterance was characterized as having a rheme with a zero topic. The rheme in short imperative statements representing a request, demand, advice, or order was found to have a globally increasing pitch or may be characterized as a fall-rise or rise-fall pitch movement.