This paper examines the durational characteristics of vowels and consonants in contemporary Soikkola Ingrian, discusses the phonological interpretation of durational contrasts, and studies correlations between the duration of different segments in the foot. The object of the study is limited to disyllabic feet with an open second syllable. The acoustic study shows three durational types of vowels both in the first and second syllable, but only two contrastive types, short and long vowels, are distinguished on the phonological level. Intervocalic consonants have five durational types on the phonetic level, and three contrastive types on the phonological level: single consonants vs. short geminates vs. full geminates. The analysis shows that contemporary Ingrian is undergoing a gradual change from a northern to a southern type Finnic language: the quantity opposition of short and long vowels in non-initial syllables is on the way to be replaced by the quality opposition of reduced and full vowels.

The report introduces a new digital resource on minor Finnic languages. This resource is the main outcome of the project “Documentation of Ingrian: collecting and analyzing fieldwork data and digitizing legacy materials” carried out by Fedor Rozhanskiy and Elena Markus at the University of Tartu in 2011–2013. The collected materials cover several minor Finnic languages with a special focus on varieties spoken in Western Ingria: the Soikkola, Lower Luga, and Heva dialects of Ingrian, the Lower Luga varieties of Votic, and Ingrian Finnish. The resource contains (a) legacy recordings of different genres made by previous researchers in 1968–2012; (b) new audio and video materials recorded mostly in 2011–2013 by the project participants; (c) transcriptions and translations into Russian and English synchronized with sound and video using the ELAN software. Altogether the resource presents 510 hours of audio recordings, 21 hours of video recordings, and 15 hours of ELAN annotations. All media files in the resource are provided with detailed metadata specifying the place and time of the recording, sociolinguistic data about the speaker, the contents of the recording, and the access rights. The resource is available on the websites of the Endangered Languages Archive (London, UK) and the Archive of Estonian Dialects and Kindred Languages of the University of Tartu (Estonia).

This article discusses a case of language competition between two minority languages, Votic and Ingrian. We analyze the sociolinguistic situation in the contact area, and the contact-induced linguistic changes in both languages. Although the two languages had a very similar fate, and the same premises for language competition, Ingrian appears to have been more socially prestigious and was for a long period of time gradually replacing Votic. It is shown that the two languages chose different strategies for interaction. The Ingrians preserved their strong identity but transformed their language significantly, and thus achieved an easier understanding with their neighbors. On the other hand, the Votes were unwilling to adapt their language to contact influence, but shifted easily to their neighbors' identity. We suggest distinguishing between two types of volatility: social volatility, which describes the willingness of a nation to shift to a new language and identity; and linguistic volatility, which denotes the readiness of speakers to adopt innovations from a neighboring language. In minority vs. minority competition, the two types of volatility often demonstrate inverse tendencies: high volatility on the linguistic level corresponds to low volatility on the social level, and vice versa.

The paper provides empirical evidence on the status of primary and secondary geminates in Soikkola Ingrian. The material for the study was recorded during the summer of 2009 from present-day speakers of Ingrian. The paper focuses on secondary geminates after a short vowel as compared to primary geminates occurring in the same environment. Experimental results confirm the ternary opposition of consonants: singletons vs. secondary geminates vs. primary geminates. The opposition between the two types of geminates is manifested in duration. Another feature distinguishing the two types is the duration ratio of a geminate to the following vowel. Both the duration of geminates and the degree of difference between the two types correlate significantly with the structure of the word, being greatest in disyllabic words with an open second syllable, medium in disyllabic words with a closed second syllable, and smallest in trisyllabic words.

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