Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22210/suvlin.2021.092.01
Diphthongs in Čakavian speeches of the island of Brač
Zdravka Biočina
; Zagreb School of Economics and Management
Iva Bašić
orcid.org/0000-0002-2171-9300
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
Abstract
Diphthongs in Čakavian and Štokavian speeches on the coast are referred to as ‘adriatisms’, which
were developed due to Venetian infl uence. Diphthongs in the Čakavian dialect have several features – the
second vowel in the diphthong is usually longer and they most often appear in the medial position, of
which the fi rst diphthong vowel represents a weak vowel. According to previous studies, the diphthongs
/ie/ and /uo/ are present in three speeches of the island of Brač: Bol, Gornji Humac, and Puči šća. Based
on the spontaneous speech of native dialect speakers of diff erent ages, genders, and education, Biočina
(2019) concluded that the frequency of diphthongs varies with age and town. For the purposes of this
study, part of the corpora from the doctoral study of Biočina (2019) was taken, more specifi cally, recordings
of the spontaneous speech of 45 speakers from Bol, Gornji Humac, and Pučišća. The auditory analysis has
revealed that diphthongs do not appear only in dialectal words (eg. [ʃaltuora], [neʋierix]), but also in words
from standard Croatian (eg. [studient], [buolniʦi]). Targeted words with diphthongs ([ie] and [uo]) were
auditorily and acoustically perceived and verifi ed. Th is was followed by a formant analysis (F1 – F3 from
the middle stable part of vowels and from three points of the vowel trajectories). Gender diff erences in the
usage of diphthongs were found, but age diff erences were recorded in Bol and Gornji Humac. Results also
showed that male speakers from Gornji Humac were using very closed [ie] realization, while diphthong
pronunciation in Pučišća was very open and fronted. In Bol, [ie] was defi ned as a very closed and back
diphthong, and [uo] was the most fronted in Pučišća. Female speakers from Gornji Humac used the most
closed and back realizations of [ie], while speakers from Bol pronounced the most open and front [ie]. The
results pointed at certain auditory and acoustic diff erences in diphthong realizations and distribution in
three geographically close Čakavian speeches
Keywords
diphthongs; formant analysis; speeches of the island of Brač; Croatian
Hrčak ID:
269760
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2021.
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