Consonant palatalization in Barabian as a reflex of the vowel palatal harmony law (based on ultrasound visualization data)

Issues of palatality and palatalization continue to be the subject of scholarly debate, particularly considering recent advances in experimental phonetic methods and instrumentation. For Turkic languages with a stable system of palatal vowel harmony, both the theoretical interpretation and the empirical description of palatalization are of particular importance. This article investigates the mechanisms by which the acoustic effect of consonantal softness is achieved in Barabian, a Turkic language of Siberia, using ultrasound tongue imaging. Forty-five stimuli containing target consonants in various positional contexts were recorded using an ultrasound helmet and an electroglottograph from seven speakers of Barabian. Data from three speakers were statistically processed using R software. Ultrasound images are presented with the tongue tip oriented to the left. The results demonstrate that the most powerful palatalizing trigger for coronal and dorsal consonants is the high front vowel [i], which induces raising and anterior displacement of the tongue body regardless of whether the vowel occurs in a pre- or post-consonant position. This effect is especially evident in the palatalization of consonants such as /s/, /’s/, /l/, and /r/ in words exhibiting soft vowel harmony. When influenced by a palatalizing vowel, dorsal consonants exhibit a shift in their place of articulation toward the region associated with palatal and palato-alveolar consonants. The issue of auslaut consonant palatalization remains unresolved and opens new opportunities for discussion. Although ultrasound data provide substantial insight into articulatory processes, this method has inherent limitations, and the present findings require verification using complementary somatodynamic and acoustic experimental techniques

Consonant · Mid vowel · Place of articulation · Relative articulation · Tongue · Vowel · Vowel harmony · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Phonetics and Phonology Research