Article

Name: Positional-combinatorial conditions of quantitative vowel variation in the Turkic languages of Altai

Authors: Albina A. Dobrynina, Iraida Ya. Selyutina, Ksenia V. Shindrova, Alexey V. Karataev

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

In the section Linguistics

Abstract:

This paper examines the quantitative variation in vocal components of bisyllabic words within the Altai Turkic languages, specifically Altai, Tuba, and Kumandin. Vowel length transformations are determined by phonetic context, specifically positional and combinatorial conditions, and the qualitative uniformity or heterogeneity of the lexeme vocal axis, rather than morphological structure or lexical semantics. Through a comprehensive interdisciplinary methodology, our comparative analysis established commonalities in the distribution of duration laws observed across various languages. These include the phonological opposition of units in terms of brevity/longitude, changes in the quantitative parameters of vowels in correlation with the openness/closeness of a syllable, the localization of a syllable in a word, the length of a word form, and qualitative and quantitative characteristics of vowels and intervocalic consonants. In addition to the widespread global patterns of vowel quantum redistribution, the three Altai languages exhibit a Turkic-specific phenomenon: positional lengthening of open vowels in the initial open syllable of bisyllabic words preceding syllables containing close vowels. The positional length of vowels is particularly noticeable in the Tuba language, where a phonologically long vowel can align with a positionally elongated vowel. Among Kumandin and Altaic speakers, the impact of the observed phonetic pattern is mitigated by the concurrent presence of other phonetic tendencies. The specific stages of quantum redistribution processes, as codified in linguistic idioms, are shaped by the historical trajectories of ethnolinguistic communities.

Keywords: Turkic Languages of Altai, experimental phonetics, EGG-D200 Electroglottography System, vocalism, quantitative characteristics, positional duration

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