Supersegmental peculiarities of the male Afro-American English speech

Abstract

The present research is dedicated to one of the most actual problems of recent years – study of the intonational arrangement of the regionally marked text. The research is focused on the Afro – American English, melodic and temporal characteristics of mail speech in particular. The work is made in the stream of the social linguistics that studies the phenomenon of a language in the close connection with a human, his thinking and practical activity. The object of the study is Afro-American English The subject of the study is the melodic and temporal characteristics of a quasi-spontaneous monological text realized by a native Afro-American English speaker. The purpose of the study is to make an audit analysis and a description of the temporal and melodic peculiarities of Afro-American English. The material of the study included a wide and a narrow body. The wide body contained documentaries about the life of Afro-American population "The History of Afro - American Lives" (the total time - 3 hours 45 minutes). On the basis of the wide body of the research a narrow body was formed, it is presented by 26 tracks (that last from 3 to 25 seconds). The material of the research is male speech of Afro-American English; it allows us to make a conclusion that the prevailing melodic characteristics are sliding and level heads in combination with the high descending tone. This assertion allows us to speak about the high level of the emotionality of the speech that is supported by the facts about the temporal specificity of the speech of Afro-Americans. The data about the intonation organization of the speech of Afro-Americans received with the help of a perceptual analysis can be of practical use in the courses of theoretical phonetics of the English language.

Keywords

• інтонаційне оформлення
• регіонально маркований текст
• афроамериканська англійська мова
• мелодичні та темпоральні характеристики чоловічого мовлення