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The intonation of Saaremaa Estonian: in search of Swedish influence

The variety of Estonian normally singled out as differing from the standard in its intonation is that of the island of Saaremaa (Osel) in the Baltic Sea. Its characteristic melody has been attributed to direct contacts with Swedish and claimed phonetically to be manifested in a higher post-stressed syllable as compared to the stressed syllable. In the present paper, a direct comparison is made on the basis of read speech between the intonation of Saaremaa and Standard Estonian. Contrary to the hypothesis of peak delay in the Saaremaa variety no significant difference is found in peak alignment between the varieties. The data show, however, that there is a significant difference in the height of initial pitch both at the beginning of an utterance and at the beginning of the second accent unit.