Word prosodic structure and vowel reduction in Moscow and Perm Russian

Central Standard Russian is well-known for its vowel reduction in two degrees: the immediately pretonic vowel is much less reduced than vowels in other unstressed positions, both in quality and in quantity, at least when the allophone is a low vowel. This two-degree reduction is expressed clearly in speech from Central Russia, but earlier studies suggest a smaller difference between the degrees in non-central areas. We measured vowel duration and quality of unstressed /a,~o/ in two modern urban Russian varieties: in read speech from 26 adolescents in Moscow (Central Russia) and Perm (Ural region). The Moscow speakers make a sharp distinction between the two degrees in both quantity (duration) and quality (F1), but we found only small, not statistically significant differences in Perm. Perm speech might lack phonological two-degree reduction altogether, in which case two-degree reduction is not a general feature of modern Russian urban speech.