User:Biktor627/Sakha Phonology

Consonants

 * are laminal denti-alveolar, whereas are alveolar.
 * vary between velar and uvular.
 * The nasal glide is not distinguished from  orthography. Thus айыы can be ayïï  'deed, creation, work' or aỹïï  'sin, transgression.'
 * is pronounced as a flap // between vowels, e.g. орон (oron), and as a trill at the end of words, e.g. тур (tur)  'stand'.
 * does not occur at the beginning of words in native Yakut words; borrowed Russian words with onset are usually rendered with an epenthetic vowel, e.g. Russian рама (rama) > Yakut араама (arāma) 'frame'.

Yakut is in many ways phonologically unique among the Turkic languages. Yakut and the closley related Dolgan language are the only Turkic languages without hushing sibilants. Additionally, no known Turkic languages other than Yakut and Khorasani Turkic have the palatal nasal //.

Consonant assimilation
Consonants undergo extensive assimilation, both progressive and regressive. Nearly all suffixes possess numerous allomorphs. For suffixes which begin with a consonant, the surface form of the consonant is conditioned on the stem-final segment. There are four such archiphonemic consonants, the distribution of which is as follows:

Examples of some of these alternations are shown in the following:

The difference between L and T can only be seen in vowel-final stems. For example, for the singular and plural allomorphs of the the third-person possessive affixes -TA and -LArA (respectively), attaching to оҕо (oɣo) 'child' the forms are оҕото (oɣo-to) 'his/her child' оҕолоро (oɣo-loro) 'their child'.

Debuccalization
Yakut hast lost the reflex of Proto-Turkic *s in word-initial position.

The reflex of Proto-Turkic *y- is

Historical debuccalization (with Sakha losing the reflex of PT *s, as well as debuccalization as an active phonological process in the modern day language (affecting the reflex of PT *y).

kïïs 'girl; daughter', kïïh-a 'his/her daughter'

Vowels
Vowel length is a primary contrast in Yakut: тас (tas) 'exterior' vs. таас (taas) 'stone', кэс (kes) 'cow' vs. кээс (kees) 'to leave',  кыр (kïr) 'to gnaw' vs. кыыр(kïïr) 'to enter'. The diphthongs ie, üö, ïa, ïa

Vowel harmony
Yakut employs progressive vowel harmony, an assimilation process where vowels in one syllable take on certain features of vowels in a preceding syllable. lip-rounding with the vowel in a preceding syllable.

Turkish

Preceding syllables

Debuccalization (rewrite)
Some notable phonological characteristic of Yakut concern the reflexes of the Proto-Turkic phonemes *s and *y. [need a better introduction]

There are a few consonant shifts which unique among the Turkic language, such as historic as well as synchronic debuccalization where the sibilant // alternates with the glottal fricative //.

Yakut has lost the reflex of Proto-Turkic *s in word-initial position, a result of a historic shift from *s- to *h- to $$\varnothing$$. This is seen in words like эн (en) 'you (singular)' < Proto-Turkic *sän, үүт (üüt) 'milk' < Proto-Turkic *süːt, and эмис (emis) 'fat' < *sämiz. This historical debuccalization may be a result of substrate influence from Evenki and/or Buryat.

Another relevant change involves a shift of the Proto-Turkic glide *y- to a sibilant  // word initially. The

Historical debuccalization (with Sakha losing the reflex of PT *s, as well as debuccalization as an active phonological process in the modern day language (affecting the reflex of PT *y).

In all dialects of Yakut, the phoneme // is debuccalized to []. This is seen kïïs 'girl; daughter', kïïh-a 'his/her daughter'

merger of *y- and *č to s.