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Ассибиляция латеральных согласных (акустика и типологические параллели)
Typological studies on sound change, palatalization and consonant harmony consider lateral consonants among liquids and do not pay much attention to lateral fricatives. The researchers show that palatalization transforms lateral sonorants to j or rhotics, whereas lateral fricatives receive only “secondary” palatalization, or additional articulation of palatalization. In this paper, I focus on several cases of lateral-to-sibilant change, both as a result of palatalization and of high acoustic variability of both laterals and sibilants.
Lateral consonants are characterised by certain invariant properties of their spectrum, however, these consonants are generally characterised by a high degree of cross-linguistic variation. The voiceless alveolar fricative consonant ɬ, which is the most common voiceless lateral, varies cross-linguistically more than any other fricative. I believe that the articulatory properties of laterals predispose them to high variability. Several acoustic characteristics can make laterals and sibilants similar: high intensity, high frequencies, “flat” spectrum. As a result, in some languages laterals can have—either across the board, or conditionally, or sporadically—realisations with a high degree of sibilant noise. In my paper, I present three steps of the process: acoustic variation that is neglected in descriptions (Chukchi, Ubykh, Khanty, Andi), alternations in modern languages (Koryak) and reconstructed sound change (Turkic and Abkhaz-Adyghe)
Analysis of linguistic reconstructions allowed us to find out that in the Abkhaz-Adyghe, Turkic and Chukotka-Kamchatkan languages scholars suggest that lateral fricatives has changed to alveolar or postalveolar sibilants. In modern Chukotka-Koryak languages there are pairs of words and morphemes similar or identical in meaning and distinguished by “alternating” lateral or sibilant.
To assess sporadic assibilation, field recordings in Khanty, Chukchi, Andi, and Ubykh were analyzed. Spectra and dynamic spectrograms show similarity between ɬ and s, ɬ and ʃ.
While numerous examples of acoustic similarity and overlapping between laterals and sibilants can be found in modern languages, they are not discussed in linguistic descriptions or even in specialized phonetic papers. Among the reasons we can suggest perceptual correction that allows the listener to ignore sporadic assibilations of laterals, which are an intermediate step between the variability of the typical lateral consonant and the assibilations that the phonetic description captures.