Interrogative Statements in Russian and Spanish Sounding Speech (Based on TV Interview Material)

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of interrogative statements in Russian and Spanish sounding speech. The role of intonation in creating interrogative meaning is considered. The research is based on the analysis of fragments of video recordings of TV interviews. The texts of the video recordings of the sounding quasi-spontaneous Russian and Spanish speech of the participants of the TV interviews were subjected to an auditive analysis. Analysis of the results of the study of the parameters of interrogative statements in Russian and Spanish sounding speech made it possible to conclude that the behaviour of melodic signs on stressed syllables is nationally specific: the peculiarity of Spanish intonation, which clearly contrasts with Russian, consists in the continuing melodic movement on back-stressed syllables. Based on these parameters of interrogative statements, an attempt is made to represent the system at the intonation level for the Russian and Spanish languages. The appeal to the systematic approach in the study of the intonation level allows us to determine the main units of this level - intonemes as sets of differential features for each of the languages that form communicative types of utterances, and draw conclusions about the main differences in intonation systems.