Lingual nasal consonants of the Altai language (results of electropalatographic and ultrasound research)
Authors:   Institute of Philology, Ryzhikova Tatiana R. , Timkin Timofey V. ,   Institute of Philology, Dobrynina Albina A. ,   Institute of Philology
Published: December 2024

The article studies nasal consonants in the Altai language on the basis of ultrasound visualization and electropalatography. Altai consonantism was previously studied by M. Ch. Chumakaeva using such traditional methods as radiography and dentopalatography. According to these data, three nasal consonant phonemes were distinguished in the language: forelingual /n/, midiolingual /ɲ/ and backlingual /ŋ/. The technical limitations of traditional methods motivate the new research. Our experiment was conducted with one subject – a native speaker of the Altai language. The stimuli were isolated word forms pronounced three times with the intonation of enumeration. The ultrasound examination was performed using an ultrasound helmet manufactured by Articulate Instruments and data obtained were processed Articulate Assistant Advanced software. This technology allows one to see the profile and movement of the tongue in the oral cavity during pronunciation and assess the nature of articulation. Electropalatography was performed using Rose Medical equipment and material recorded was analyzed using icSpeech Professional software. An artificial silicone palate, which is manufactured individually for each subject and includes 62 electrical probes,
was placed on the speaker’s hard palate and used to determine the points of contact of the tongue with the palate during articulation. The segmentation of the material was carried out in the Praat program, the EMU-SDMS corpus system was used to combine the results of the experiment into a single database. Statistical calculations and plotting were performed using the R programming language. The applied techniques have the following advantages in comparison with the traditional methods: (1) the sounds under study are isolated from a single phonetic word, which makes it possible to describe them in more natural conditions compared to the isolated pronunciation; (2) the used tools automatically measure key parameters at the recording stage, which allows operating not with fragmented recordings, but with mean values and ranges of variability. To describe articulation, we introduced a number of metrics: the coefficients of dental-alveolar, palatal, velar contacts, the point of maximum narrowing in the oral cavity, the point of maximum tongue elevation. The analysis of these metrics makes it possible to distinguish the following nasal consonants in the Altai language: [n] – forelingual dental-alveolar velarized allophone of the phoneme /n/ in words with back row vowels; [n′] (IPA sign [nʲ]) – forelingual dental-alveolar palatalized realization of the phoneme /n/ in words with front row vowels; [ɲ] – mediolingual mediopalatal allophone of /ɲ/; [Y] (IPA sign [ŋ]) – interlingual backpalatal realization of /ŋ/ in words with front row vowels; [ŋ] (IPA sign [N]) – backlingual uvular allophone of phoneme /ŋ/ in words with back row vowels. The results obtained are in good agreement with M. Ch. Chumakayeva’s data.