Realization of voiced plosives in modern Ossetic

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of Ossetic words aiming to identify positional and combinatorial changes in Ossetiс voiced plosive consonants. Specifically, it examines the pronunciation of the consonants represented in writing by the letters б /b/, д /d/, and г /ɡ/. The analysis employs instrumental methods and is conducted semi-automatically by using Praat. The findings indicate that in the word-final position, the consonants /d/ and /ɡ/ are realized as their voiceless counterparts /t/ and /k/, respectively. The consonant /b/ does not occur in this position. In medial positions, the voiced consonants may undergo optional devoicing, although no consistent patterns have yet been identified. The fact that the causes of consonant voicing /de-voicing have not yet been determined for all positions, suggests that the voicing /de-voicing of a consonant is conditioned not only by its linear position in a word (beginning, middle, end), but also by other factors such as its position relative to the stress, the number of syllables in the word, the frequency of the word, and whether the word belongs to the native or borrowed vocabulary layer. Additional research is needed to identify all the factors that influence consonant realization in the Ossetiс language.