ИСТИНА

Standard Modern Russian has phonological contrast between palatalized and plain (or, to be more precise, velarized) consonants. One of the most prominent changes attributed recently to this part of its phonetic system is the dramatic affricatization of palatalized dental stops which are now pronounced in most phonetic contexts as affricates [t͡sj], [d͡zj]. This paper presents two related problems: 1) what factor triggers the phonetic changes in question, and 2) if there are any phonetic factors which could help decide whether these consonants should be treated as stops or as affricates phonologically. 1. Spectrographic study of Russian shows that the main perceptual cue for differentiation of non-palatalized stops is the second formant’s transition of preceding and following vowels with its movement in a region of 500-1000 Hz for labials, 1500-1800 Hz for dentals and no transition for velars, while the palatalized stops have second formant’s locus in a region of 2000-2200 Hz. Our perceptual experiments show that native speakers of Russian easily distinguish between plain stops only by the second formant’s transition of vowels before or after the consonant in question when no information about the quality of burst or its duration is available, while the palatalized ones in the same situation are all recognized as soft labials. This brings us to hypothesize that such a fast spread of palatalized dental stops’ affricatization in Standard Modern Russian is triggered by the need to more effectively distinguish palatalized plosives in situations that do not provide the primary acoustic cue for their differentiation to the listener. It is worth noticing than in Northern Russian dialect voiceless non-palatalized dental affricate is neutralized with a palatalized postalveolar one in a soft dental [t͡sj] no such affricatization of palatalized dental stops is attested (but speakers of Standard Modern Russian always perceive dialectal [t͡sj] as [tj]). 2. Since palatalized dental stops are pronounced in most phonetic contexts as affricates, the question may arise whether they should be treated phonologically as affricates or as plain stops. On the basis of our experimental data we vote for the latter: in the position before homorganic sonorants (nasal and lateral) palatalized dental stops are not affricated (and often unreleased), while the fricative part of dental affricates in the same position was still preserved in pronunciation of all the subjects studied.