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THE DIALECTAL CORPUS AS A MEAN OF MAINTAINING AND ANALYZING OF THE BURYAT PROSODY // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2020. Issue 3 (29). P. 9-19

The article is devoted to the creation of the Buryat dialectal corpus. This Corpus is mainly oriented on the study of the prosody of the Buryat dialects. Although the dialects are actively functioning, their current state is a matter of concern. However, in the 80-s of the last century, the program for studying dialects was reduced, and till nowadays there are no large-scale, systematic researches in the field. The creation of such resource is due to the getting worse sociolinguistic situation with the Buryat dialects, as well as the lack of modern researches of the Buryat prosody and in the Buryat dialectology in general. The paper describes the main stages of work on the Corpus, requirements for the collection of material, the principles of its segmentation and annotation. The material was recorded in areas of Buryat territory, speakers both men and women, who know their dialect since childhood and use it in everyday communication. The recording program consists of two blocks: prepared phrases for the study of intonation and spontaneous everyday speech. The intonation analysis is carried out using the PRAAT program. For segmentation and annotation the program ELAN is used. The work pays special attention to the principles of prosodic markup of Buryat. Available prosodic transcriptions were analyzed and basic principles of prosodic annotation were developed. In the Buryat dialectal corpus prosodic transcription will include: segmentation of the speech into phrases which differ in their illocutionary function, indication of the location of the intonation center and areas of prosodic emphasis, the description of the pitch contour. Special signs were developed. The work on the creation of the Dialect Corpus is at the beginning, so plans and future prospects are outlined. This resource will be useful not only for the study of the dialect intonation, but also for the Buryat dialectology in general.

Keywords: Buryat dialects, spoken dialectal corpus, prosody, stress, intonation, prosodic annotation