Articulatory analysis of palatalised rhotics in Russian

Stoll, Taja (2017): Articulatory analysis of palatalised rhotics in Russian: implications for sound change. Dissertation, LMU München: Fakultät für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften

Abstract

The present work investigated the articulatory variation of palatalised and plain rhotics and laterals in Russian. It has often been often observed that palatalised rhotics are diachronically quite unstable, which has been attributed to the articulatory incompatibility between trilling and palatalisation. The sound changes which affected palatalised rhotics in Slavic languages can be divided into three categories (Kavitskaya 1997, Carlton 1991): 1) contrast neutralisation: palatalised /rj/ and plain /r/ merge into /r/ (Chapter 2) 2) glide insertion: /rj/ changes into a sequence of plain /r/ followed by a glide /j/ (Chapter 3) 3)spirantisation: /rj/ changes into a fricative trill /r/ or a postalveolar fricative /Z/ (Chapter 4) Although laterals and rhotics belong to the same class of liquids (Proctor 2009, Kochetov 2005), the phonological opposition between /lj/ and /l/ has been neutralised less often than between /rj/ and /r/. This thesis aimed to investigate whether the comparison between rhotics and laterals could shed light on the diachronic instability of the phonological opposition between /rj/ and /r/ and of palatalised rhotics itself.

• Dokumententyp: Dissertationen (Dissertation, LMU München)
• Keywords: palatalisation, rhotics, laterals, Russian, phonetics, sound change, Articulatory Phonology
• Themengebiete: 400 Sprache ; 400 Sprache > 490 Andere Sprachen
• Fakultäten: Fakultät für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften
• Sprache der Hochschulschrift: Englisch
• Datum der mündlichen Prüfung: 3. Februar 2017
• 1. Bericht­erstatter:in: Harrington, Jonathan