14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14)

San Francisco, CA, USA
August 1-7, 1999


Spoken and Sung Styles in Estonian Prosody

Ilse Lehiste (1), Jaan Ross (2)

(1) Ohio State University, USA; (2) University of Tartu, Estonia

The paper presents an analysis of two interviews of an Estonian folk singer, who tells stories, recites Estonian folk poetry, and sings a total of 170 lines in the old folksong (Kalevala-metre) style. The singer was born in 1893; the tapes from which the analyzed extracts were taken date from 1960-61 and 1971-73, when the singer was 68 and 81 years old respectively. The tapes were obtained from the Estonian Folklore Archives and analyzed acoustically at the laboratory of the Ohio State University Department of Lingustics, using the Kay Computerized Speech Laboratory. The results show gradual adaptation of the spoken style to the rhythm of the song.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Lehiste, Ilse / Ross, Jaan (1999): "Spoken and sung styles in Estonian prosody", In ICPhS-14, 1499-1500.