Article

Name: An inventory of intermittent vowel phonemes in the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language

Authors: N. S. Urtegeshev, N. B. Koshkаreva

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences Novosibirsk, Russian Federation; Novosibirsk State University Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: This paper considers an inventory and distribution of intermittent vowel phonemes of the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language, which belongs to the Eastern dialect of the language. The phonetic recordings have been made with three speakers. The wordforms in our programme have been arranged in such a way as to reveal phonological oppositions, to put vowels into a strong position, in which their peculiarities are realized most pronouncedly. The records analysis, which was carried out by auditory examination, allowed us to state the phonetic subsystem of the Surgut dialect vowels. The subsystem includes 57 units without additional characteristics: reduced, short, «pure» long vowels, long intermittent vowels of full articulation, long intermittent vowels of partial articulation, guttural rounded vocal tunings, diphthongs and diphthongoids; and 98 units if co-articulations are mentioned. It became necessary to distinguish a vowel inventory from such diversity of sounds. It has been decided to start the work from the most frequent group of vowels – namely from long intermittent vowels of full articulation (they are complex sounds consisting of two vocal components of the same origin divided by laryngeal stop) – 17 phones and long intermittent vowels of partial articulation (complex sounds consisting of two vocal elements of different origin divided by laryngeal stop) – 5 sounds. All long intermittent vowels have been found to occur only in the first syllable of a word after a consonant; the exception being the vowel «I'I» which functions in the absolute beginning of a word. All these vowels are strongly tensed: when articulated they make the pharyngeal muscles contract, this effect seen with the naked eye. Moreover, they can also have a co-articulation: labialization or nasalization. Intermittent vowels of partial articulation have a transient character from intermittent vowels of full articulation to long vowels via a stage of diphthongs and diphthongoids. In some words there happen an interchange of intermittent vowels of full articulation and partial articulation. Four vowel phonemes have been distinguished as a result of a distributive analysis: [a'a], [o'o], [υ'υ], [I'I].

Keywords:

Bibliography: