“HIDDEN” VARIANTS OF THE RUSSIAN STANDARD PRONUNCIATION

Abstract

The article is devoted to the works of L. A. Verbitskaya in the field of the Russian standard pronunciation, manifestations of the orthoepic norm in different conditions of the speaker’s speech activity. Research carried out at the Department of Phonetics of St Petersburg State University in recent years and continuing at the present time shows which phonemic sequences, differing from those prescribed by orthoepic dictionaries, are observed in the speech of both professional speakers of the pronunciation norm, and in the speech of young people in careful and reduced speech. The analysis of the obtained results leads to possible interpretations of the terms “careful and reduced pronunciation types”, “careful and reduced (colloquial) styles” of pronunciation. The article also provides new data on the tendencies of change in the phonological system of the Russian language, formulated by L. A. Verbitskaya, which can lead to a change in the pronunciation norm. A previously developed automatic transcriber is described. It converts the text into a sequence of phonetic symbols that meet the requirements of the orthoepic norm, and also offers variants of deviations from the norm observed in a large corpus of prepared professional speech, as well as the statistical probabilities of these deviations. The issues of both the loss of labialization, repeatedly described by L. A. Verbitskaya, and abnormal labialization, are also considered, to be taken into account in the new version of the automatic transcriber. Refs 35.