FOREWORD

The present conspectus of Russian speech sounds is based on the material of the Hun- garian-Russian contrastive phonetic research that I carried out in the years between 1966 and 1972.

The aim of the conspectus is to describe so-called speech sounds, i.e. the types of articulatory-acoustic elements necessary for the phonic (viva voce) realization of linguistic communication in Russian. The 78 sounds presented in the conspectus have been obtained by a phonetic analysis of the Russian speech stream (sound strings). The speech sound is a unit having real existence within the continuum composed by ihe string of speech sounds. It is produced by the articulatory and perceived by the hearing organs of man in the communication process and as such, it can be recognized and characterized either as a quasi-identical complex of movements or as a quasi-identical complex of acoustic vibrations. We have registered a few sounds which occur less frequently, viz. at morpheme boundaries and in foreign words. Since they are not individual or optional sounds but ones that occur in definable situations, phonetic positions, within the sound string, we. have considered them as belonging to the ‘building-blocks of Russian speech’.

The sound plates display the configurations of the articulatory organs necessary for the correct pronunciation of Russian speech sounds as well as the acoustic parameters of the latter. Since, instead of sounds uttered in isolation we have examined sound features which regularly recur in the typical phonetic positions (i.e. in the definite sound contexts) of meaningful linguistic elements, the sound diagrams also contain the data of typical sound transitions.

For the examination of the articulatory and acoustic parameters of sounds I have carried out instrumental experiments with several informants. Still, partly for lack of space, partly for the sake of uniformity and internal commensurability, I have deemed it more advisable to restrict the conspectus material to the data furnished by one informant. At this point I wish to thank Anatoly Gusev, Olga Saltykova, Tatyana Krylova, Nina Dubrovskaya and Rosa Frolova for their kind participation in the experimentations, which demanded considerable patience and endurance.

I wish to express my grateful acknowledgements to Professor Dr. Zoltan Zsebok, then the Director of the Radiological Clinic of the Semmelweis University of Medical Sciences, for allowing me to carry out the radiographic investigations, and also to Professor Dr. Istvan Torok for helping me in the preparation of the photoradiograms and videotaped recordings.

I have made most of the spectographic analysis in the Phonetics Laboratory of the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I would like to thank my colleagues and fellow research-workers there for their understanding and helpful contribution.

If this book contributes to a better knowledge and acquisition of the Russian language, our work has not been a fruitless effort.