engleski

Ultrasound analysis of postalveolar and palatal affricates in Croatian: a case of neutralisation

The phonetic status of Croatian affricates /ʧ/ and /ʨ/ is uncertain. Traditionally, affricate /ʧ/ is classified as postalveolar and /ʨ/ as palatal, but there is no physiological data to support this classification. Several studies show that postalveolar and palatal affricates are being neutralised in modern Standard Croatian, but the evidence of the neutralisation process is limited. Motivated by the possible existence of a sound change and by the relative lack of articulatory data, our aim was to use ultrasound to investigate midsagittal tongue contours in Croatian affricates /ʧ/ and /ʨ/. Nine typically speaking Croatian participants were included in the study. The results did not support the traditional classification of the affricates, but they also did not support the claims about the complete neutralisation. The analysis showed that /ʨ/ had higher position of the tongue blade/dorsum and less variability when compared with /ʧ/. Speaker specific differences were found and discussed.

affricates ; neutralisation ; ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI) ; Croatian

nije evidentirano