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365 CHAPTER 20 167 The sound structure of BCS In its primary form, language is spoken. Writing originally came into being in order to preserve utterances of language beyond the actual moment of speech, and to make these utterances available to a wider audience. In time, of course, the written word took on a character of its own. Nevertheless, for most languages it is still the case that the written word is derived from the spoken word: that which appears on the page is a representation of the way something is (or would be) spoken, rather than vice versa. In the case of languages which were codified recently according to the principle embedded in the maxim write as you speak, the written language is a very close representation of the spoken language. BCS definitely falls into this latter category: once the correspondence between letters and sounds has been learned, it is very easy to read a written text aloud; conversely, it is equally easy to make a correct written transcription of an instance of speech. In general, this is a desirable state of affairs. Yet it must be noted that there is no completely ideal way to reproduce sound in writing. It is good to reproduce pronunciation as much as possible, but it is also good to reproduce the relationships between words to the extent possible. Language is a highly structured system, whose basic elements are sounds and meaningful combinations of these sounds. Examples of sounds are consonants such as t or k, and vowels such as a or e. Examples of meaningful combinations of these sounds (or morphemes, defined in [161]) are raz-; rek-; and -ac. Each sound exists in an idealized version which may or may not be what is actually spoken: in order to understand that which is spoken one sometimes needs to reconstruct the idealized, underlying version of it. This is particularly important in languages such as BCS, in which morphemes interact in such complex ways. In addition, these underlying sounds usually affect one another in various ways precisely at the point where one morpheme comes into contact with another. These points of contact, or morpheme boundaries, give very important insight into the structure of language. There are a number of general sound processes which tend to occur at morpheme boundaries in BCS. Among these are palatalization, vowel shifts, voicing assimilation, cluster simplification , vowel loss, and vowel insertion. Many find that gaining an insight into the working of these processes makes the language much easier to learn: this chapter is for them. Others should be aware that the material in this chapter, while potentially interesting and helpful, is not essential. 167a. Palatalization One cannot learn BCS without encountering (and eventually mastering) the system of consonant softenings. These relationships, which have been presented as a series of shifts called Type A, Type B and Type C consonant softenings (review [112]), are the result of historical processes known under the general term palatalization. When a consonant occurred adjacent to a vowel pronounced further to the front of the mouth (such vowels are called by linguists front vowels), the tongue would tend to come closer to the hard palate while producing that consonant. Gradually the pronunciation of these consonants came to be significantly different from the pronunciation of the same consonants when they occurred adjacent to vowels pronounced further back in the mouth (called by linguists back vowels) – so much so that they were perceived as different sounds. There thus arose a whole new series of consonants, generally called palatal consonants or soft consonants. CHAPTER 20 366 Although palatalization took place at all levels of the language (that is, any time the appropriate vowels and consonants were spoken adjacent to one another), the most important instances of palatalization are those which occurred at morpheme boundaries. The three different types which the student has encountered correspond to three different historical processes. The consonants partaking in what is here called Type B softening are known to historical linguists as the results of the First Palatalization, and those partaking in what is called here Type A softening are known to linguists as the results of the Second and Third Palatalizations. These palatalizations occurred in all Slavic languages. But the consonants partaking in what is here called Type C softening result from a change particular to the history of what is now BCS. Because they were occasioned not by an adjacent front vowel but by the consonant j (called jod or jot by...

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