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https://doi.org/10.38003/ccsr.1.1-2.3

Consonantal Structures in Phonetics and Phonology: Cases from Slavic languages

Yong Heo ; Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present and compare two different approaches (a phonetic
approach and a phonological one) for the speech sound systems of natural languages. To
this end, this study investigates natural speech sound systems with the consonantal
systems of four Slavic languages, Russian, Polish, Czech and Serbian and Croatian, on the
basis of phonetic and phonological approaches. In the phonetic approach, the consonant
inventories of the four Slavic languages are analyzed with the theory of maximal and
sufficient dispersion and the size principle, together with a frequency-based statistical
approach. Segmental universals are discussed regarding sound types such as obstruents
and sonorants. From the phonetic approach, it is shown that Slavic consonant systems
are very unusual in terms of natural languages. Palatalized sounds in Russian and
affricates and fricatives in Russian and Polish support that the Slavic consonantal
system is far removed from the general aspect of human languages. On the other hand,
with the phonological approach, four of the five feature-based principles proposed by
Clements are employed to reveal the universals of the languages. They are Feature Economy, Marked Feature Avoidance, Robustness and Phonological enhancement. What we
have seen is that some unsolved problems from the phonetic approach are explained
by phonological accounts. The fact that Russian has plenty of segments represented
by [+palatal] may not be unusual with respect to a feature-based approach. In addition,
while the phonetic approach claims that Slavic languages (in particular, Russian and
Polish) have different consonantal systems from the general aspect of natural languages
because of the marked segments, the phonological approach accounts for the universals
of these languages in the light of Robustness and Feature Economy. In short, what we get
from phonetic accounts are language universals, found by frequency-based statistical
approach while what we get from phonological accounts, using a feature-based approach,
are linguistic universals.

Keywords

consonantal systems of Slavic languages, phonetic universals for Slavic consonants, distinctive features, feature economy, marked feature avoidance robustness, phonological enhancement

Hrčak ID:

328053

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/328053

Publication date:

31.12.2019.

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