On the phonological status of the affricate ts in Soikkola Ingrian

This paper considers the affricate ts in Soikkola Ingrian. The research is based on the field data recorded in 2013–2017 from Ingrian native speakers. The data were collected by elicitation using specially elaborated phonetic questionnaires.

The aim of the study is to determine the phonological status of ts in Soikkola Ingrian by analyzing its acoustic phonetic properties. The affricate is tested against seven criteria; and it is shown that the Soikkola Ingrian ts has properties of both a phoneme and a cluster.

Three criteria bring out the difference between ts and a typical consonant cluster: the component s does not change into š when a part of ts (unlike in other contexts); the burst of t is often spread as opposed to the compact burst in other clusters with plosives; and the duration ratio of t and s is different from the ratio of the components in other clusters (t is significantly longer than s).

Four criteria distinguish ts from a typical single phoneme: ts is rare as an initial consonant in a word; it does not participate in grade alternations (unlike in the neighboring Votic language where ts alternates similarly to plosives); the duration of ts is similar to the duration of a cluster but not a singleton; and ts does not block the reduction of the second vowel in the CVCV structure (in this structure, the second vowel is prolonged if the preceding consonant is a singleton, but it gets reduced both qualitatively and quantitatively if preceded by a geminate or a cluster).

The conclusion is that the affricate ts has to be considered either as a non-prototypical phoneme or as a non-prototypical consonant cluster.

The paper also briefly addresses the properties of the affricate tš in the same variety. The affricate tš behaves differently from ts (it can appear as a word-initial consonant, the duration of its two components is comparable, etc.), but still cannot be considered as a regular consonant or a regular cluster.

The research demonstrates that the phonological system of Soikkola Ingrian is non-orthogonal: the decision about the phonological status of either affricate correlates with the phonological interpretation of the other affricate and some other consonants.