Last Updated: 2019-09-24
COMPROMISED: conflation between vowels and glides; widely contrasting phonological documentation of the language
Background
Language Family: Turkic / Common Turkic / Kipchak / Kipchak-Nogai / Kazakh
- Kazakh is spoken within Central Asia, specifically in China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Phonology
Consonants
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Labial
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Dental
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Alveolar
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Postalveolar
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Palatal
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Velar
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Uvular
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Glottal
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Stops
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p b
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t̪ d̪
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k ɡ
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q
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Fricatives
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s̪ z̪
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ʃ ʒ
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χ ʁ
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n̪
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ŋ
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Trills
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r
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Approximants
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w
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l̪
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j
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Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.
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Vowels
- No two accounts of the Kazakh vowel inventory (ranging between 9 and 12 vowel phonemes) seem to agree (McCollum and Chen 2020, 7). I have chosen to follow the analysis done by Bowman and Lokshin (2013) (p. 1).
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Front
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Back
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High
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i y
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ɯ u
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Near-High
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ɪ
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ʊ
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Mid
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e ø
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o
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Near-Low
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æ
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Low
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ɑ
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Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are unrounded and those on the right are rounded.
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Alphabet
- Although Kazakh can be written with the Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic scripts, I have opted to represent only the Cyrillic script below, as the others pose more conflation between phonemes (Vajda 1994, 606–7).
- ⟨в⟩, ⟨ё⟩, ⟨ф⟩, ⟨х⟩, ⟨ц⟩, ⟨ч⟩, ⟨щ⟩, ⟨ъ⟩, ⟨ь⟩, and ⟨э⟩ appear in loanwords (Vajda 1994, 608, 609).
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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Comment
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а
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/ɑ/
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ә
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/æ/
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б
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/b/
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г
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/ɡ/
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ғ
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/ʁ/
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д
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/d̪/
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е
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/e/; /je/
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/je/: word-initially
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ж
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/ʒ/
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з
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/z̪/
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и
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/i/; /j/
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/i/: default in rules set
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й
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/j/
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к
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/k/
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қ
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/q/
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л
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/l̪/
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м
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/m/
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н
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/n̪/
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ң
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/ŋ/
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о
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/o/
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ө
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/ø/
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п
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/p/
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р
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/r/
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с
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/s̪/
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т
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/t̪/
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у
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/u/; /w/
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/u/: default in rules set
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ұ
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/ʊ/
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ү
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/y/
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х
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/χ/
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һ
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/h/
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ш
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/ʃ/
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ы
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/ɯ/
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і
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/ɪ/
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ю
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/ju/
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я
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/jɑ/
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Syllable Structure
- Syllables in Kazakh follow the order of (C)V(C)(C) (McCollum and Chen 2020, 23).
Lenition Rules
- /b/, /ɡ/, and /q/ may spirantize intervocalically (Kirchner 1998).
- /d̪/ does spirantize as well to [ð] for some speakers, but it is far more rare (McCollum and Chen 2020, 5).
- In fast speech /q/ tends to be realized as [χ] (McCollum and Chen 2020, 4).
- This process tends to neutralize the contrast between /q/ and /χ/.
- /r/ may be realized as a flap in fast speech (McCollum and Chen 2020, 6).
Misc. Rules
- A type of vowel harmony is present with velar and uvular stops; front vowels tend to appear in the vicinity of velar stops, while back vowels tend to appear in the vicinity of uvular stops (McCollum and Chen 2020, 4).
- /χ/ is sometimes realized as [x] due to Russian influence (ibid.).
- /n̪/ assimilates in place to following obstruents (McCollum and Chen 2020, 5).
- /l/ becomes velarized in the vicinity of back vowels (McCollum and Chen 2020, 6).
- An epenthetic vowel tends to appear preceding word-initial /r/ (ibid.).
- Consonant gemination appears to occur (Dotton and Wagner 2018, 16).
References
Bowman, Samuel R., and Benjamin Lokshin. 2013. “Idiosyncratically Transparent Vowels in Kazakh.” In Phonology 2013.
Dotton, Zura, and John Doyle Wagner. 2018. “A Grammar of Kazakh.”
Kirchner, Mark. 1998. “Kazakh and Karakalpak.” In The Turkic Languages, edited by Lars Johnson and Éva Csató-Johanson, 318–21. Routledge.
McCollum, Adam G., and Si Chen. 2020. “Kazakh.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association, February. Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1–23. doi:10.1017/s0025100319000185.
Vajda, Edward J. 1994. “Studies on East Asia.” In, edited by Edward H. Kaplan, 603–50. Western Washington University.