De l'ambiguïté dans les interrogations fermées en russe moderne

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to show how ambiguity can be cleared in positive yes/no questions in modern Russian. For the purpose of our study, we will analyze three interrogative transitive predicate structures (svO1, sVo et soV). Despite the same syntactic surface structure and the same nuclear accent placement, each of them satisfies two different types of questions. The analyses reveal that when the segmental level does not allow disambiguisation, this is achieved via various prosodic techniques: nature of nuclear accent ("neutral" accent vs. "exclusive" accent) combined with specific features of F0 contour on the prenuclear region, pitch range variations, and pause.