Lost Prosodic Oppositions: A Study of Contrastive Duration in Estonian Funeral Laments

This study examined the temporal structure of three recorded South-Eastern Estonian laments, a vocal style close to the old folksong tradition of the same region. A one-to-one correspondence was found between syllables in the text and notes in the melody. The duration of more than 700 syllables was measured. Syllable duration was found to vary by a considerable amount. In spoken language, the three quantities of disyllabic Estonian words are signalled by characteristic ratios between the durations of the first and the second syllable (S1/S2 ratio), which have approximately the values of 0.67, 1.5, and 2.0 for short, long, and overlong degrees. In laments, the range of S1/S2 ratios was much smaller. The difference in S1/S2 ratio between long and overlong disyllabic words was nonsignificant in all three performances, and that between short and long words was nonsignificant in one performance. This tendency toward rhythmic regularity may be explained on the basis of the original activity-associated nature of the old folksong tradition.