Article

Name: Graphic variability in the transmission of sound [ʒʹ] in the Chalkan language

Authors: Natalya N. Fedina, Timofey V. Timkin

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

In the section Linguistics

Abstract:

The languages with an unformed written tradition may have several parallel variants of the national text graphic design because of the initial stage of the writing system formation. The Chalkan language has no approved writing system. However, an increasing number of publications appear in Chalkan every year. Chalkans adapt the Russian and Altaic alphabets to record their national vocabulary. However, the lack of a unified writing system makes the author's record incomprehensible for reading and generates various variants of the national text recordings. This study was the first to examine the variants of graphic transmission of the sound [ʒʹ] in the Chalkan language, to make audio recordings of recorded words, to identify the precedents of graphic variation using experimental methods of phonetics (segmentation and annotation of audio recordings using the Praat program), and to propose compromise ways to unify the writing system. Due to the absence of a grapheme for the Chalkan sound [ʒʹ], native speakers use Russian graphemes that are closest to its sounding: ж [ʒʹ], щ [ʃʹ], sometimes ч [tѢʃ]. There is no sound [tѢʃ] in the Chalkan speech, but under the influence of the Altai literary language, Chalkan language native speakers can use the grapheme ч. Spectro-graphic and audio-visual observation methods have found that the semi-resonant palatalized sound [ʒʹ] in the Chalkan language is realized mainly in word forms with soft-order vowels.

Keywords: Chalkan language, writing, variability, graphics, phonetics, hissing background, experimental research methods

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