Long Vowels in Mid-19th Century Yakut Books: Errors or Reflections of Minor Prosodic Oppositions Overlooked by Researchers?

Abstract

Introduction. The first two Yakut-language books — Acts and Epistles of the Apostles (1858) and D. Khitrov’s Brief Grammar of the Yakut Language (1858) — contain occasional macrons (acute accents) over short vowels usually employed to mark extended vowel length. Goals. This study aims to identify rules to have determined the use of this diacritic and reveal if there be any phonetic reality behind it traceable in modern Yakut dialects. Materials and methods. The first stage of analysis shows that in the examined books the diacritic appears only above various forms of monosyllabic stems. Therefore, a complete list of all forms of Turkic monosyllabic stems has been compiled, and each lexeme statistically counted and analyzed for frequency use — with and without such diacritic. These collected data were compared to those on the pronunciation analysis of non-initial forms of monosyllabic lexemes in modern Yakut dialects obtained through the experimental phonetic software package Praat. Results. The work discovers that in non-initial forms of monosyllabic words some speakers of modern Yakut dialects tend to increase length and intensity of the vowel in the first syllable as compared to vowel sounds in the second one usually stressed in standard Yakut. This emphasis is as sporadic as is attested by the earliest books examined. Parameters for this increase in length and intensity of first-syllable vowels vary across dialects. In modern Yakut dialects (and in the editions), ы, э, аа, уу in the first syllable of non-initial forms of monosyllabic words are most frequently marked prosodically. Conclusions. This rather unexpected set of vowels (ы and э are usually quite short) and the increase in length and intensity of the first-syllable vowel confirmed by the data collected from four independent sources (two books and two modern dialects) show that the insights into earliest Yakut-language books make it possible to identify a previously undescribed prosodic feature of Yakut dialects which deserves further comprehensive study.