THE ACOUSTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF MONOPHTHONGS AND DIPHTHONGS IN THE KIHNU VARIETY OF ESTONIAN.

This paper presents the first acoustic study of monophthongs and diphthongs in the Kihnu variety of Estonian. The focus is on six diphthongs which have arisen after the diphthongization of long open and mid vowels. The comparison of their components with monophthongs revealed that the target values of the diphthongs are close to the corresponding monophthongs. There was some variation due to coarticulatory influences between the diphthong components. It was shown that the duration of both target vowels in the diphthong is longer in the third quantity than in the second quantity. The analysis also revealed that there is an acoustic basis for postulating the existence of two triphthongs in Kihnu. Formant trajectory length proved to be a useful measure for comparing monophthongs, diphthongs and triphthongs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]