Soft guttural consonants: palatal or palatalized?

The purpose of the article is a critical analysis of the interpretations of the concepts of palatality and palatalization as means of realizing the category of phonetic softness. The relevance of the research is determined by the ambiguity and inconsistency in the explanation of the terms palatality and palatalization in Russian and foreign literature, which has been repeatedly pointed out by linguists since the 1980s. In order to eliminate the difficulties in scientific communication, there is an urgent need to develop a clear system of parameters that distinguish the phonetic phenomena under consideration. The research is based on objective instrumental data on the sound systems of the languages of the Altai community, obtained by Siberian phonetists using a comprehensive interdisciplinary methodology that includes not only linguistic proper, but also experimental phonetic methods. The generalization of the results of the study of palatal and palatalized consonant articulations based on the material of Siberian languages indicates that these settings are articulated with the obligatory involvement of the middle part of the surface of the tongue or its fragment in the process. The fundamental difference between the categories under consideration is that the palatalized settings have a second, additional to the main, focus of noise generation. If for palatal settings, the forward-up extension of the (front)middle(inter)-lingual part of the tongue is the main articulation that generates the main noise-generating barrier, then for palatalized settings it is an additional work of the speech organs, forming an additional focus for the formation of high-frequency noise associated with the effect of molarity. The presence of an additional focus of articulation serves as the basis for qualifying patterns as palatalized rather than palatal. Front-lingual articulations, divided by the configuration of the front part of the tongue into dorsal and non-dorsal, generate two different strategies for producing the category of mollicity: The (strong)dorsal implements the concept of palatality, the non-dorsal implements the strategy of palatalization. Similarly, the class of soft guttural articulations, including mid-inter-lingual, inter-lingual, inter-back-lingual and back-lingual patterns, should be divided into two series. The function of the mid-inter-lingual articulations is the realization of palatality, while the other settings produce the effect of weak mollicity. Thus, in the languages of Siberia, as in Russian, the mollicity of the front-lingual (strongly)dorsal and mid-inter-lingual articulations is the main articulation, they should be interpreted, contrary to established tradition, as palatal, not palatalized.

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