pronounced as /notice/
This article covers the phonology of the Uyghur language. Uyghur, a Turkic language spoken primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region features both vowel harmony and vowel reduction.
| Back | |||||
| R | UR | R | |||
| Close | pronounced as /ɪ/ | pronounced as /ʏ/ | (pronounced as /ɯ/) | pronounced as /u/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /e/ | pronounced as /ø/ | pronounced as /o/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /æ/ | pronounced as /ɑ/ | |||
Uyghur vowels are by default short, but long vowels also exist because of historical vowel assimilation (above) and through loanwords. Underlyingly long vowels would resist vowel reduction and devoicing, introduce non-final stress, and be analyzed as |Vj| or |Vr| before a few suffixes. However, the conditions in which they are actually pronounced as distinct from their short counterparts have not been fully researched.
Official Uyghur orthographies do not mark vowel length, and also do not distinguish between pronounced as //ɪ// (e.g., بىلىم pronounced as //bɪlɪm// 'knowledge') and back pronounced as /link/ (e.g., تىلىم pronounced as //tɯlɯm// 'my language'); these two sounds are in complementary distribution, but phonological analyses claim that they play a role in vowel harmony and are separate phonemes.
The high vowels pronounced as //ɪ//, pronounced as //ʊ//, and pronounced as //ʏ// are devoiced in non-stressed positions when they occur between two voiceless consonants, or in word-initial position before a voiceless consonant: e.g. uka pronounced as /[ʊ̥kɑ]/ 'older brother', pütün pronounced as /[pʏ̥tʏn]/ 'entire', ikki pronounced as /[ɪ̥kkɪ]/ 'two'.
pronounced as //e// only occurs in words of non-Turkic origin and as the result of vowel raising.
Uyghur has two processes of systematic vowel reduction (or vowel raising):
The former process is applied before the latter; As with other phenomena, long vowels are exempt. For example:
pronounced as //ɑl + ɪŋ// → pronounced as //elɪŋ// (cf. Turkish alın) 'take!'
pronounced as //ɑtɑ + lɑr + ɪmɪz// → pronounced as //ɑtɪlɪrɪmɪz// (cf. Turkish atalarımız) 'our fathers' (not *pronounced as /[etɪlɪrɪmɪz]/ in Uyghur because reduction to pronounced as //e// can only be applied before reduction to pronounced as //ɪ// in a word)
pronounced as //ɑt + ɪm// → pronounced as //etɪm// (cf. Turkish atım) 'my horse')
pronounced as //pæːr + ɪm// → pronounced as //pæ(ː)rɪm// 'my feather' (in some loanwords, vowel raising does not occur)
Uyghur, like other Turkic languages, displays vowel harmony. Words usually agree in vowel backness, but compounds, loans, and some other exceptions often break vowel harmony. Suffixes surface with the rightmost [back] value in the stem, and /e, ɪ/ are transparent (as they don't contrast for backness). Uyghur also has rounding harmony.
| Labial | Dental | Post-alv./ Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /m/ | pronounced as /n/ | pronounced as /ŋ/ | ||||||||||
| Stop | pronounced as /p/ | pronounced as /b/ | pronounced as /t/ | pronounced as /d/ | pronounced as /t͡ʃ/ | pronounced as /d͡ʒ/ | pronounced as /k/ | pronounced as /ɡ/ | pronounced as /q/ | pronounced as /ʁ/ | pronounced as /ʔ/ | ||
| Fricative | (pronounced as /f/) | (pronounced as /v/) | pronounced as /s/ | pronounced as /z/ | pronounced as /ʃ/ | pronounced as /ʒ/ | pronounced as /x/ | pronounced as /h/ | |||||
| Trill | pronounced as /r/ | ||||||||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /l/ | pronounced as /j/ | pronounced as /w/ | ||||||||||
Uyghur voiceless stops are aspirated word-initially and intervocalically. The pairs pronounced as //p, b//, pronounced as //t, d//, pronounced as //k, ɡ//, and pronounced as //q, ʁ// alternate, with the voiced member devoicing in syllable-final position, except in word-initial syllables. This devoicing process is usually reflected in the official orthography, but an exception has been recently made for certain Perso-Arabic loans. Voiceless phonemes do not become voiced in standard Uyghur.
Suffixes display a slightly different type of consonant alternation. The phonemes pronounced as //ɡ// and pronounced as //ʁ// anywhere in a suffix alternate as governed by vowel harmony, where pronounced as //ɡ// occurs with front vowels and pronounced as //ʁ// with back ones. Devoicing of a suffix-initial consonant can occur only in the cases of pronounced as //d// → pronounced as /[t]/, pronounced as //ɡ// → pronounced as /[k]/, and pronounced as //ʁ// → pronounced as /[q]/, when the preceding consonant is voiceless. Lastly, the rule that pronounced as //ɡ// must occur with front vowels and pronounced as //ʁ// with back vowels can be broken when either pronounced as /[k]/ or pronounced as /[q]/ in suffix-initial position becomes assimilated by the other due to the preceding consonant being such.
Stops and affricates lenite when preceding a dissimilar consonant. pronounced as //t͡ʃ// goes to pronounced as /[ʃ]/, pronounced as //d͡ʒ// to pronounced as /[ʒ]/, pronounced as //k// to pronounced as /[ç]/, and pronounced as //q// to pronounced as /[χ]/. pronounced as //ɡ// goes to pronounced as /[ɣ]/ in word-initial syllables, but in non-initial syllables, pronounced as //ɡ// and pronounced as //ʁ// behave like their unvoiced equivalents and go to pronounced as /[ç]/ and pronounced as /[χ]/ respectively. These changes are not reflected in orthography, except when pronounced as //b// lenites to pronounced as /[v]/ or pronounced as /[w]/ as
Uyghur displays vocalic assimilation, atypical among Turkic languages. Syllable-final pronounced as //r//, pronounced as //l//, and pronounced as //j// are optionally assimilated to the preceding vowel which is lengthened, in the case of e and u, made lower and less tense; e.g., xelqler pronounced as /[xæːqlæː]/ ‘the nations’. However, this never occurs when pronounced as //l// and pronounced as //j// are word final. This phenomenon occurs most common in colloquial speech, but is often avoided when reciting, reading, or singing. As a result, Uyghur speakers often hypercorrect by inserting an pronounced as /[r]/ after a long vowel where there is no phonemic pronounced as //r//, especially after attaching a vowel-initial suffix (e.g. bina 'building', or 'my building'). In addition, although this is not represented orthographically, a few cases of "r-deletion" have been lexicalized, such as تۆت töt ('four').
Loan phonemes have influenced Uyghur to various degrees. pronounced as //d͡ʒ// and pronounced as //x// were borrowed from Arabic and have been nativized, while pronounced as //ʒ// from Persian less so. pronounced as //f// only exists in very recent Russian and Chinese loans, since Perso-Arabic (and older Russian and Chinese) pronounced as //f// became Uyghur pronounced as //p//. Perso-Arabic loans have also made the contrast between pronounced as //k, ɡ// and pronounced as //q, ʁ// phonemic, as they occur as allophones in native words, the former set near front vowels and the latter near a back vowels. Some speakers of Uyghur distinguish pronounced as //v// from pronounced as //w// in Russian loans, but this is not represented in most orthographies. Other phonemes occur natively only in limited contexts, i.e. pronounced as //h// only in few interjections, pronounced as //d//, pronounced as //ɡ//, and pronounced as //ʁ// rarely initially, and pronounced as //z// only morpheme-final. Therefore, the pairs *pronounced as //t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ//, *pronounced as //ʃ, ʒ//, and *pronounced as //s, z// do not alternate.
The primary syllable structure of Uyghur is CV(C)(C).[1] Uyghur syllable structure is usually CV or CVC, but CVCC can also occur in some words. When syllable-coda clusters occur, CC tends to become CVC in some speakers especially if the first consonant is not a sonorant. In Uyghur, any consonant phoneme can occur as the syllable onset or coda, except for pronounced as //ʔ// which only occurs in the onset and pronounced as //ŋ//, which never occurs word-initially. In general, Uyghur phonology tends to simplify phonemic consonant clusters by means of elision and epenthesis.