Nonverbal Elements in Spontaneous Russian Speech of Chinese Speakers: Pragmatics and Phonetic Features

Introduction. In any language, everyday speech structures include not only lexical and grammatical levels. A significant role is played by nonverbal characteristics of the sound chain, such as stress, intonation, and paralinguistic aspects. So, vocalizations and sound artifacts should also be recognized as integral properties of oral speech. Goals. The study aims to examine such artifacts often associated with speech production, namely: tongue clapping, smacking and noisy inhalation of air, or slurping. These features are not purely physiological and prove functionally loaded during communication, which makes them an interesting object of linguistic research. The study identifies their functional varieties and phonetic correlates. Materials and methods. Our instrumental analysis has covered a total of 277 sound artifacts extracted from Russian oral monologues of 20 Chinese speakers. Results. The analysis describes all the identified sound artifacts by duration, articulation pattern, and position in the speech stream in relation to other units. Conclusions. In addition to the three types of sound artifacts identified prior to the instrumental analysis (from transcripts), the study describes three more varieties of similar phenomena ― smacking/clacking sounds preceded by swallowing, and two types of smacking/clacking sounds associated with inhalations. It is believed that the obtained data may be instrumental in such applied aspects of linguistics as colloquialism, forensic linguistics, and automatic processing of natural speech. The presence of the phonetic phenomena discussed in the study still significantly distinguishes natural speech from that generated by artificial intelligence systems.

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