Distribution of voiced fricative consonants of the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language in the position after vowels

This work aims at identifying and describing the articulatory characteristics of the bilabial and guttural consonant phonemes of the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language by distributive analysis. The Khanty language is characterized by a pronounced dialect fragmentation. The Surgut dialect is one of the Eastern Khanty dialects. A number of works are devoted to its vocalism, while only one paper addresses the Surgut consonantism. The system of the Surgut dialect consonants is characterized by several features, with one being the alternation of fricative bilabial [w], guttural non-labialized [ɣ], and guttural labialized [ɣЮ] consonants. According to experimental studies conducted in the V. M. Nadelyaev Laboratory of Experimental-Phonetic Researches, Institute of Philology, SB RAS, these sounds have been found to alternate not only in speakers of different Surgut sub-dialects but also in the speech of one speaker. This study examined the word forms with target sounds found in the dictionary of the Eastern Khanty dialects by N. I. Tereshkin. The paper presents language material, with a series of words in different phonetic contexts and a summary distribution table. Following N. S. Trubetskoy’s rules of phoneme distinction, we performed a sound analysis and identified two phonemes: the bilabial rounded phoneme /w/ and the guttural hypothetical pho-neme /ɣ/. The bilabial one was found to have two allophones [w, ɣЮ], with the guttural phoneme realized only in one allophone [ɣ].