WORD-BY-WORD MELODIC CONTOUR AND ONE TYPE OF INCOMPLETENESS’ MARKING IN TSERKOVNOE DIALECT, ARKHANGEL’SK REGION

The dialect studied in the present paper represents Northern Russian prosodic system in which each word bears a pitch accent (word-by-word melodic contour). The analysis based on 1360 phrases show the remarkable difference of this dialect from those up-todate known typologically related dialects from Pinega region: the pitch movement in Plesetsk idiom is falling (with a preceeding rise on prestressed syllable or on a consonant in stressed syllable’s onset as opposed to a rising one on a stressed vowel in Pinega’s system. Thus, the Northern Russian dialects may vary in the direction of the pitch movement of the word-by-word accent. Meanwhile it is also was found that the meaning of incompleteness in Plesetsk dialect is marked by H + L* !Н% melodic contour (the falling pitch accent with the middle phrase or boundary tone) whereas in the statement with the finality meaning the H + L* L% contour is used (the falling pitch accent with the low boundary tone). We argue finally that the data collected may serve as a basis to distinguish three level of boundary tones in the Northern Russian dialects with word-by-word melodic contour.