SEGMENTAL PECULIARITIES IN THE SPEECH OF CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIANS
The present investigation is dedicated to the study of segmental peculiarities in the speech of contemporary Australians. Australian English (AusE) is not only a unique manner of speaking, but a peculiar means of individual and social expression. It has been defined that AusE is realized in three types of pronunciation which allow Australians to make linguistic choice in accordance with the needs of the situation. They have been classified as the following: Cultivated AusE (CAus) - a normalized type of pronunciation, which is spoken by a very small percentage of the population. This type is mostly close to the British Near RP pronunciation. Broad AusE (BrAus) is popular type of speech, the result of blending and evolution of jargon, dialects, which were spoken by the first setters of Australia. General AusE (GenAus) - is general Australian, which is in between popular and normalized types of pronunciation, it has no vividly expressed features. The greater part of Australian population mainly in cities speak it. The difference between British and Australian vowels has been analysed in the paper. The conducted complex investigation based on auditory and instrumental analysis allowed to reveal the present condition of Australian vowels. It has been proved that in the subsystem of long and short vowels the duration of close vowels is shorter the duration of open vowels. In the subsystem of long monophtongs, open and half open vowels [ɑ:], [ɜ:], [ɔ:] exceed the duration of close vowels [ɪ:] and [u:]. Such fact can be explained by the fact that back vowels [ɑ:], [ɔ:] have last their back position and tend to the center of phonetic space. Gender factor as it has been defened influence the duration of vowels. The duration of vowels in female speech is longer than in male speech, which proves a well known in sociolinguistic fact that female speech is more normalized then male one.