Affricates in the Shor language

The Shor language, unlike the neighboring Siberian Turkic languages, has a well-developed consonant system, which has been revealed to be the result of the superimposition of the Turkic superstrate on the Ket substrate. In this paper, we consider the Shor consonants, which are complicated by their barrier formation, noise occlusive-fricative or affricates. A detailed analysis of this type of sounds made it possible to divide them into two groups - true (real) and false (affricated or looking like affricates). Some cases of the formation of false affricates and their functioning in the speech were shown. The analysis of the true noise affricates distribution and compatibility (in accordance with the N. S. Trubetskoy’s rules of phoneme discrimination based on the functional criteria) allowed us to identify three occlusive-fricative consonant phonemes: [‡]1, [t‡^с]2, [’‡:]3. Based on a comprehensive experimental-phonetic study, a detailed definition was given to each noise frontlingual-mediolingual affricate phoneme. Further research enabled comparing the words of the Shor language, which have in their sound form consonants under consideration, with the words of other Turkic languages with the same semantics. To summarize, each of the affricates concerned was found to have its correspondence in other Turkic languages, as well as in the old Turkic language. The phonemes [‡]1, [t‡^с]2 correspond to the old Turkic hissing affricate *h, and [’‡:]3 - to the old Turkic * j.

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