Comparative phonetic analysis of interrogative sentence intonation in the Mari and French languages

Introduction. In Russian linguistics, there is a dominance of a functional (communicative) approach to the consideration of questions of bilingualism. Fluency in a foreign language leads to the appearance of intermediate system which differs from the mother tongue by the presence of two systems of signifiers. The inevitable phenomenon of interference leads primarily to phonetic errors in the speech of the bilinguals. This article reviews the mechanisms of realization of interrogative sentences with the direct word order in the Mari and French languages and makes comparative analysis of the findings. The relevance of the research is caused by the interference processes in conditions of artificial bilingualism. This subject of this research is the difference in intonation of interrogative sentences in Mari and French, the object of the research is a general question with the direct word order in the compared languages. The aim is to identify universal and distinctive features in Mari and French interrogative sentences with direct word order. Materials and Methods. The data for the research was the recordings of the speech of the speakers of the French language as the native and French spoken by Mari students. Comparative method of studying interference gives objective data on differences in systems of contacting languages. It explains the linguistic reasons for intonation errors. An experimental phonetic research of the speech of Mari students studying French plays an important role. An intonographic method to compare the melodies of various communicative types of Mari and French phrases was used during the course of the study. Results and Discussion. The Mari language reveals a universal character of the intonation processing of the questions with direct word order, which is ascending melody of the intonation center of the phrase. The differences from the intonation of the French sentence is the place of the intonation center, the movement of the tone on precentral and postcentral syllables, as well as the dynamic structure of the phrases. The instrumental analysis shows a minor difference between the standard French intonation and the record of the voice of Mari student pronouncing this type of French phrases, namely: a relatively smooth intonation in the initial and middle parts of the phrase, the lowering tone on the initial syllables, which is not in the standard, and the melodic rise on the accented syllable. Conclusion. The native speakers of the Mari language in generally correctly reproduce the melodic structure of the French phrase. However, prosodic interference affects the intonation contour of phrases in the initial and middle parts of it, and their rhythmical-syllabic structure: different temporal characteristics, the slowing rate of the speech, the stretch of the pretonic syllables and the increase of the number of accents.