Positional length of vowels in South Siberian Turkic languages

Abstract

Representing a cardinal feature of vowels, duration has always been in the focus of Turkologists. However, only two types of length, etymological and secondary, have been considered. Positional duration, manifested in the prolongation of the wide vowels of an open syllable before a syllable with a narrow vowel, has not been fully covered in theoretical research. The significant lengthening of open vowels up to the duration of the contracted unit evolved into a pattern that was consistently and systematically implemented in the Turkic languages. This paper summarizes for the first time the auditory and instrumental data available in the literature on the South Siberian Turkic languages. It reveals the commonality and specifics of the pattern considered in various languages. A comparative analysis allowed identifying two groups of languages. In Kumandy, Shor, Telengit, and Tuvan, the first syllable of bi- and polysyllabic words can have all the wide vowels lengthened both before the non-labialized narrow ы, и, and before the labialized y, ӱ. Khakass, Chalkan, Tuba, Altai-kizhi, and Baraba-Tatar have this pattern only before ы, и. In Khakass and Baraba-Tatar, positional vowel lengthening of the non-first syllable of polysyllabic words is possible only in preposition to guttural г and ғ. In other languages, any voiced or sonorous consonant does not prevent the positional lengthening. The pattern of positional lengthening of vowels that is typologically common to the Kipchak Turkic languages in the phonetic system indicates the historical interactions with the languages of the Kipchak group.