Abstract
One of the characteristic phonetic features of Russian is the reduction of unstressed vowels known as akan’e and ikan’e respectively. In this paper, we will focus on the analysis of the Russian ikan’e. This vowel reduction process reduces the unstressed /a, i, o, e/ vowels to [ ĭ ] after a soft (i.e., palatalized) consonant. At first glance, therefore, it seems to be another type of the decomposition process occurring in Slovenian, Upper Sorbian, and Polish. We, however, argue that the ikan’e process cannot be described from a decompositional view, but we claim that the ikan’e process is a consequence of the interaction between the palatal feature of the preceding consonant and the weak quality of the following unstressed vowel. Ikan’e is, unlike akan’e, a kind of assimilation, not just a vowel reduction. The feature-geometric account and several crucial constraints responsible for the vowel reduction are used to explain this idea. Finally, using basic premises of the Optimality Theory, we attempt to explain how the geographical variations of the ikan’e process have occurred in the history of the Slavic languages.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call