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Komi-Permyak coronal obstruents: acoustic contrasts and positional variation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2007

Alexei Kochetov
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, Canada [email protected]
Alevtina Lobanova
Affiliation:
Perm' State Pedagogical University, Russia

Abstract

Komi-Permyak (Finno-Ugric) has a typologically rare contrast between palatal stops and palatal affricates; the latter are also contrastive with postalveolar affricates. In addition, the language has a relatively uncommon three-way place contrast among sibilant fricatives. This paper investigates acoustic properties of the Komi-Permyak voiceless coronal obstruents in different positional contexts. An acoustic analysis of data from six native speakers of the language revealed that the contrasts were well differentiated by a combination of duration, noise intensity, spectral shapes, and vowel transitions – consistently with previous studies of similar consonants in other languages. The results also showed some positional differences in the realization of the consonants. Overall, the study contributes to a better understanding of phonetic implementation of marked phonological contrasts and positional variation; it also provides an acoustic record of the endangered language.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Journal of the International Phonetic Association 2007

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