Eva Liina Asu-Garcia, Ph.D.
Estonian and General Linguistics
University of Tartu
Born in 1971 in Tartu, Estonia;
Studied English and Swedish at the University of Tartu and
Linguistics at the University of Cambridge
Fellowship
Andrew W. Mellon-Fellow
Project
Aspects of Estonian Intonation
My research falls in the field of experimental phonetics and concerns above all such prosodic features of Estonian as intonation, rhythm and quantity. In my project, I plan to explore some aspects of Estonian intonation that have not been analyzed in depth previously. Very little research has targeted aspects of Estonian prosody in spontaneous speech and intonational variation. Also, virtually no work has explicitly investigated the interaction between word and utterance level prosodies. My project aims to combine these relatively neglected aspects of Estonian prosodic research focussing on the study of word and sentence prosody in spontaneous language usage, while taking into account variation and various interactions at work between different prosodic features. More specifically, I plan to carry out an analysis of the prosodic characteristics of varieties spoken on the islands of Estonia. The islands are prosodically one of the most interesting areas in Estonia. They have been considered the transition area between the Scandinavian tone languages and Finnic languages lacking word tone. Using recordings of spontaneous speech, I plan to investigate more closely the variety of Estonian spoken on the Island of Kihnu, comparing its intonation to that of the Island of Saaremaa and Standard Estonian.Recommended Reading
Asu, Eva Liina. 2005. "Intonational Contour Alignment in Saaremaa and Standard Estonian." Linguistica Uralica 2, 107-112.
Asu, Eva Liina and Francis Nolan. 2007. "The Analysis of Low Accentuation in Estonian." Language and Speech 50 (4), 567-588.
Nolan, Francis and Eva Liina Asu. 2009. "The Pairwise Variability Index and Coexisting Rhythms in Language." Phonetica 66 (1-2), 64-77.
Publications from the Fellows' Library
Asu-Garcia, Eva Liina (2010)
Asu-Garcia, Eva Liina (2009)
The pairwise variability index and coexisting rhythms in language
Asu-Garcia, Eva Liina (2009)
Illustration of the IPA : Estonian
Asu-Garcia, Eva Liina (2007)
The analysis of low accentuation in Estonian
Asu-Garcia, Eva Liina (2005)
Intonational contour alignment in Saaremaa and standard Estonian
