Ingrian phonology


Ingrian is a nearly extinct Finnic language of Russia. The spoken language remains unstandardised, and as such statements below are about the four known dialects of Ingrian and in particular the two extant dialects.
The written forms are, if possible, based on the written language introduced by the Ingrian linguist in the late 1930s. Following 1937's mass repressions in the Soviet Union, the written language was abolished and ever since, Ingrian does not have a written language.

Vowels

The following chart shows the monophthongs present in the Ingrian language:
  • The vowel is only present in some Russian loanwords, like rьbakka ; this vowel has been replaced by in some idiolects.
  • All vowels can occur as both short and long. The long vowel is extremely rare, occurring in borrowed words like rььžoi.
  • The vowels are usually realised as diphthongs in the southern varieties of the Ala-Laukaa dialect, as diphthongoids in many transitional varieties, and as in the northernmost Soikkola subdialects.

Diphthongs

Besides the diphthongs that arise due to diphthongisation of the long mid vowels, Ingrian has a wide range of phonemic diphthongs, present in both dialects:
Ingrian has only one falling phonemic diphthong, iä, which is only present in the personal pronouns miä and siä.

Vowel reduction

Phonemically, Ingrian vowels can be long and short in both dialects. Short vowels after short stressed syllables are realised as half-long:
Vowel reduction is furthermore a common feature in both dialects. In the Soikkola dialect, vowel reduction is restricted to the vowels a and ä; These vowels are sometimes reduced to in quick speech:
In Ala-Laukaa, this process is much more common and regular, but varies greatly by speaker. In the northernmost varieties, reduction is similar to that of the Soikkola dialect. In the southernmost idiolects, the following features appear:
  1. Long unstressed vowels are shortened to short vowels.
  2. Unstressed vowel clusters are reduced to, to, and to.
  3. Unstressed diphthongs generally keep their quality and length. Diphthongs ending in may sometimes lose this glide, although this may be a phonological feature.
  4. Short unstressed vowels following a short stressed syllable remain unreduced, and continue to be realised as halflong.
  5. Other short unstressed are shortened to, respectively.
  6. # When at word-end, these shortened vowels are furthermore pronounced as voiceless: respectively.
  7. # The voiceless word-final may surface as palatalisation of the preceding consonant instead.
  8. Other short unstressed are shortened to a schwa, and dropped at word-end.
  9. Short unstressed at word-end is dropped, and is sometimes also reduced to a schwa in polysyllabic words, although this is not as frequent as the reduction of and.
Although some vowels merge in the process of reduction, speakers do generally have the knowledge of the original vowel quality.

Vowel harmony

Ingrian, just like its closest relatives Finnish and Karelian, has the concept of vowel harmony. The principle of this morphophonetic phenomenon is that vowels in a word consisting of one root are all either front or back. As such, no native words can have any of the vowels together with any of the vowels.
To harmonise formed words, any suffix containing one of these six vowels have two separate forms: a front vowel form and a back vowel form. Compare the following two words, formed using the suffix -kas: liivakas from liiva and iäkäs from ikä.
The vowels are considered neutral and can co-occur with both types of vowels. However, stems with these vowels are always front vowel harmonic: kivekäs from kivi.
Compound words don't have to abide by the rules of vowel harmony, since they consist of two stems: rantakivi from ranta + kivi.

Consonants

The consonantal phonology of Ingrian varies greatly among dialects. For example, while Soikkola Ingrian misses the voiced-unvoiced distinction, it has a three-way consonant length distinction, missing in the Ala-Laukaa dialect.

Soikkola dialect

  • The velar nasal is a form of occurring before the plosive .
  • The velar fricative is a long version of .
  • Common realisations of are and .
  • is most commonly realised as the palatalised
  • may be realised as the consonant cluster.

Consonant length

In the Soikkola dialect, consonants have a three-way distinction in length. Geminates can be either short or long :
A similar phenomenon can be observed in the related Estonian language.
A word with the underlying structure *VCVCV is geminated to VCˑVːCV in the Soikkola dialect:
This rule however does not apply to forms that are underlyingly tetrasyllabic:

Consonant voicing

The Soikkola dialect also exhibits a phonetic three-way voicing distinction for plosives and the sibilant:
  • Intervocalically, short consonants, when followed by a short vowel, are generally realised as semi-voiced, so,, and for,, and respectively:
  • : poika,
  • : poikaa,
  • When preceding a hiatus, word-final consonants are also semi-voiced. When not, voicing assimilation occurs, resulting in voiced consonants before voiced consonants and vowels, and voiceless consonants before voiceless consonants:
  • : pojat,
  • : pojat nooret,
  • : pojat suuret,
  • : pojat ovat,
  • Word-initially, plosives and sibilants are generally voiceless. Some speakers, however, may pronounce Russian loanwords, deriving from Russian words with a word-initial voiced plosive, with a voiced initial consonant:
  • : bocka ~ ; compare also ''pocka''

Nasal assimilation

A word-final dental nasal assimilates to the following stop and nasal:
Some speakers also assimilate word-final to a following liquid, glottal fricative or bilabial approximant:

Ala-Laukaa dialect

  • The velar nasal only appears before the plosive or
  • may be realised as the consonant cluster.
  • sometimes corresponds to Soikkola and is thus written ⟨c⟩: compare mancikka.

Palatalisation

In the Ala-Laukaa dialect, phonetic palatalisation of consonants in native words occurs first of all before the vowels and the approximant :
The palatalised and may both be realised as by some speakers. Furthermore, palatalisation before and that have developed from an earlier * or * respectively is rare:
The cluster ⟨lj⟩ is realised as a long palatalised consonant in the Ala-Laukaa dialect:
These same phenomena are noticed in the extinct Ylä-Laukaa dialect:

Consonant voicing

At the end of a word, the sibilant ⟨s⟩ and the stop ⟨t⟩ are voiced:
Like in the Soikkola dialect, when preceding a word beginning with a voiceless stop, this sibilant is again devoiced:

Prosody

Stress

Stress in Ingrian falls on the first syllable in native words, but may be shifted in loanwords. An exception is the word paraikaa, where the stress falls on the second syllable. Secondary stress falls on odd-numbered syllables or occurs as a result of compounding and is not phonemic.