Pitch Declination Rate in Russian Verse

The paper provides a comparison of pitch declination rate in a verse line and a prosaic sentence. Pitch declination in speech is a gradual lowering of pitch from the beginning to the end of each phrase. Declination seems to be one of the natural characteristics of speech intonation pattern. This phenomenon is observed in baby cries and primate vocal signals as well, though certain intentional efforts may deliberately prevent it. The article discusses the necessity of the pitch declination analysis in intonation studies and reviews existing views on declination and different approaches to its description. The basic methods of its calculation, standard formulas and algorithms are presented. We have found that declination rate in verse meets the expected values for this parameter. The paper also observes and describes the high consistency of the declination phenomenon and the absence of its considerable deformations in its initial segment in comparison to prose. The results of the comparative analysis for the pitch offset levels in verse and prose are presented. The article also describes the results of comparing pitch declination in verse texts of different structure. We have shown that declination rate does not normally depend on rhythmical peculiarities of the verse. The tendency towards preserving its gradually descending intonational structure dominates over other linguistic parameters.