Serbo-Croatian phonology

Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language with four national standards. This article deals exclusively with the Eastern Herzegovinian Neo-Shtokavian dialect, the basis for the standards of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian.

Serbo-Croatian has 30 phonemes, 25 consonants and 5 vowels, and a pitch accent.

All lexemes are spelled in accented form in both scripts (Gaj's Latin and Vuk's Cyrillic), as well as in both accents where these differ (Ijekavian and Ekavian, with Ijekavian bracketed). Translations are given as tooltips, and can be seen by hovering the cursor over a marked entry.

Consonants

The consonant system of Serbo-Croatian has 25 phonemes. One peculiarity is a presence of both post-alveolar and palatal affricates, but a lack of corresponding palatal fricatives.[1]

Labial Dental,
Alveolar		 Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar
Nasal m n ɲ
Plosive voiceless p t k
voiced b d ɡ
Affricate voiceless t͡s t͡ʃ t͡ɕ
voiced d͡ʒ d͡ʑ
Fricative voiceless f s ʃ x
voiced v z ʒ
Approximant central j
lateral l ʎ
Trill r

/r/ can be syllabic, short or long, and carry rising or falling tone, e.g. kȓv "blood", sȑce "heart", sŕna "deer", mȉlosr̄đe "compassion". It is typically realized by inserting a preceding or (more rarely) succeeding non-phonemic vocalic glide.[8]

/l/ is generally velarized ("dark", [ɫ]).[9] Diachronically, it was fully vocalized into /o/ in coda positions, as in past participle *radil : radio.[10] In some dialects, notably Torlakian, that process did not take place, and /l/ can be syllabic as well. However, in the standard language, vocalic /l/ appears only in loanwords, as in the name for the Czech river Vltava for instance, or debakl, bicikl. Very rarely other sonorants are syllabic, such as /ʎ̩/ in the surname Štarklj and /n̩/ in njutn "newton".

In more detailed phonetic studies, the post-alveolars (/ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/) are described as apical ([ʃ̺] [ʒ̺], [t̺ʃ̺ʷ], [d̺ʒ̺ʷ])[1] or retroflex ([ʂ], [ʐ], [tʂ], [dʐ]).[11] In most spoken Croatian idioms, as well as in some Bosnian, there is a complete or partial merger between post-alveolar (/tʃ/, /dʒ/) and palatal affricates (/tɕ/, /dʑ/).[12]

Alveolo-palatal fricatives [ɕ], [ʑ] are marginal phonemes, usually realized as [sj], [zj]. However, the emerging Montenegrin standard has proposed two additional letters, Latin ⟨Ś⟩, ⟨Ź⟩ and Cyrillic ⟨Ć⟩, ⟨З́⟩, for the phonemic sequences /sj/, /zj/, which may be realized phonetically as [ɕ], [ʑ].

Voicing contrasts are neutralized in consonant clusters, so that all obstruents are either voiced or voiceless depending on the voicing of the final consonant, though this process of voicing assimilation may be blocked by syllable boundaries.

Vowels

Vowel space of Serbo-Croatian from Landau et al. (1999:67). The diphthong /ie/ occurs in some Croatian and Serbian dialects. Schwa [ə] only occurs allophonically.

The Serbo-Croatian vowel system is symmetrically composed of five monophthongal vowels: a, e, i, o, u.[1] Although phonemic, the difference between long and short vowels is not represented in standard orthography. Unstressed vowels are shorter than the stressed ones by 30% (in case of short vowels) and 50% (in case of long vowels).[2]

Front Central Back
short long short long short long
Close i iː u uː
Mid e eː o oː
Open a aː

The long Ijekavian reflex of Proto-Slavic jat is of disputed status. The prescriptive grammar Barić et al. (1997) published by the foremost Croatian normative body—the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, describes it as a diphthong,[13] but this norm has been heavily criticized by phoneticians as having no foundation in the spoken language, the alleged diphthong being called a "phantom phoneme".[14] Thus the reflex of long jat, which is spelled as a trigraph ⟨ije⟩ in standard Croatian, Bosnian and Ijekavian Serbian, represents the sequence /jeː/.

Stressed vowels carry one of the two basic tones, rising and falling.

Pitch accent

Shtokavian dialects allow two tones on stressed syllables, and have distinctive vowel length, and so distinguish four combinations of these, called pitch accent: short falling ⟨◌̏⟩, short rising ⟨◌̀⟩, long falling ⟨◌̑⟩, and long rising ⟨◌́⟩.[15]

Most speakers from Serbia and Croatia do not distinguish between short rising and short falling tones.[16] They also pronounce most unstressed long vowels as short, with some exceptions, such as genitive plural endings.[16]

The accent is relatively free because it can be on any syllable except the last one. Accent alternations are very frequent in inflectional paradigms, both by quality and placement in the word (the so-called "mobile paradigms", which were present in Proto-Indo-European itself and became much more widespread in Proto-Balto-Slavic). Different inflected forms of the same lexeme can exhibit all four accents: lònac (nominative sg.), lónca (genitive sg.), lȏnci (nominative pl.), lȍnācā (genitive pl.).

Although distinctions of pitch only occur on stressed syllables, unstressed vowels maintain a length distinction. Pretonic syllables are always short, but posttonic syllables may be either short or long. These are traditionally counted as two additional accents. In the standard language, the six accents are realized as follows:

Slavicist
symbol		IPA
symbol		Description
e[e]non-tonic short vowel
ē[eː]non-tonic long vowel
è[ě]short vowel with rising tone
é[ěː]long vowel with rising tone
ȅ[ê]short vowel with falling tone
ȇ[êː]long vowel with falling tone

Examples are short falling as in nȅbo /ˈnêbo/; long falling as in pîvo /ˈpîːvo/; short rising as in màskara /ˈmǎskara/; long rising as in čokoláda /tʃokoˈlǎːda/. Unstressed long syllables can occur only after the accented syllable, as in d(j)èvōjka /ˈd(ј)ěvoːjka/ or dòstavljānje/ˈdǒstavʎaːɲe/. There can be more than one post-accent length in a word, notably in genitive plural of nouns: kȍcka → kȍcākā. Realization of the accents varies by region.

Restrictions on the distribution of the accent depend, beside the position of the syllable, also on its quality, as not every kind of accent can be manifested in every syllable.

  1. Falling tone generally occurs in monosyllabic words or the first syllable of a word[17] (pȃs, rȏg; bȁba, lȃđa; kȕćica, Kȃrlovac). The only exception to this rule are the interjections, i.e. words uttered in the state of excitement (e.g. ahȁ, ohȏ)
  2. Rising tone generally occurs in every syllable of a word except the ultimate and never in monosyllabics[17] (vòda, lúka; lìvada, lúpānje; siròta, počétak; crvotòčina, oslobođénje).

Thus, monosyllabics generally have falling tone, whilst polysyllabics generally have falling or rising tone on the first syllable, and rising in all the other syllables but the last one. The tonal opposition rising ~ falling is hence generally only possible in the first accented syllable of polysyllabic words, whereas the opposition by lengths, long ~ short, is possible even in the non-accented syllable as well as in the post-accented syllable (but not in the pre-accented position).

Proclitics (clitics that latch on to a following word), on the other hand, may "steal" a falling tone (but not a rising tone) from the following mono- or disyllabic word. This stolen accent is always short, and may end up being either falling or rising on the proclitic. This phenomenon (accent shift to proclitic) is most frequent in the spoken idioms of Bosnia, in Serbian it is more limited (normally with the negation proclitic ne), and is almost absent from Croatian Neo-Shtokavian idioms.[6] Such a shift is less frequent for short rising accents than for the falling one (as seen in the example /ʒěliːm/ → /ne ʒěliːm/)

in isolationwith proclitic English
CroatianSerbianBosnian
rising /ʒěliːm/I want /neʒěliːm/I don't want
/zǐːma/winter /uzîːmu/ /ûziːmu/in the winter
/nemɔɡǔːtɕnɔːst/inability /unemɔɡǔːtɕnɔsti/not being able to
falling /vîdiːm/I see /něvidiːm/I can't see
/ɡrâːd/city /uɡrâːd/ /ûɡraːd/ to the city (stays falling)
/ʃûma/forest /uʃûmi/ /ǔʃumi/ in the forest (becomes rising)

Morphophonemic alternations

Serbo-Croatian exhibits a number of morphophonological alternations. Some of them are inherited from Proto-Slavic and are shared with other Slavic languages, and some of them are exclusive to Serbo-Croatian, representing later innovation.

Fleeting a

The so-called "fleeting a" (Serbo-Croatian: nepóstojānō a), or "movable a", refers to the phenomenon of short /a/ making apparently random appearance and loss in certain inflected forms of nouns. This is a result of different types of reflexes Common Slavic jers */ъ/ and */ь/, which in Štokavian and Čakavian dialects merged to one schwa-like sound, which was lost in a weak position and vocalized to */a/ in a strong position, giving rise to what is apparently unpredictable alternation. In most of the cases, this has led to such /a/ appearing in word forms ending in consonant clusters,[18] but not in forms with vowel ending.

The "fleeting a" is most common in the following cases:[18]

Palatalization

Further information: Slavic first palatalization

The reflex of the Slavic first palatalization was retained in Serbo-Croatian as an alternation of

/k/ → /tʃ/
/ɡ/ → /dʒ/
/x/ → /ʃ/

before /e/ in inflection, and before /j, i, e/ and some other segments in word formation.[19] This alternation is prominently featured in several characteristic cases:

There are some exceptions to the process of palatalization. The conditions are:

Doublets exist with adjectives derived with suffix -in from trisyllabic proper names:

Sibilantization

Further information: Slavic second palatalization and Slavic third palatalization

The output of the second and the third Slavic palatalization is in the Serbo-Croatian grammar tradition known as "sibilantization" (sibilarizácija/сибилариза́ција). It results in the following alternations:

/k/ → /ts/
/g/ → /z/
/x/ → /s/

before /i/. This alternation is prominently featured in several characteristic cases:

In two cases there is an exception to sibilantization:

Doublets are allowed in the following cases:

Iotation

Main article: Iotation

[1]

Assimilation

There are two types of consonant assimilation: by voicing (jednačenje po zvučnosti) and by place of articulation (jednačenje po m(j)estu tvorbe).

Assimilation of voice

All consonants in clusters are neutralized by voicing, but Serbo-Croatian does not exhibit final-obstruent devoicing as most other Slavic languages do.[21] Assimilation is practically always regressive, i.e. voicing of the group is determined by voicing of the last consonant.[22] Sonorants are exempted from assimilation, so it affects only the following consonants:

Furthermore, /f/, /x/ and /ts/ don't have voiced counterparts, so they trigger the assimilation, but are not affected by it.[22]

As can be seen from the examples above, assimilation is generally reflected in orthography. However, there are numerous orthographic exceptions, i.e. even if voicing or devoicing does take place in speech, the orthography does not record it, usually to maintain the etymology clearer.

Assimilation by place of articulation

Assimilation by place of articulation affects /s/ and /z/ in front of (post)alveolars /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /tɕ/, /dʑ/, as well as palatals /ʎ/ and /ɲ/, producing /ʃ/ or /ʒ/:[22]

Simultaneously, assimilation by voicing is triggered if necessary.

L-vocalization

See also: L-vocalization

A historical /l/ in coda position has become /o/ and is now so spelled, and produces an additional syllable. For example, the Serbo-Croatian name of Belgrade is Beograd. However, in Croatian, the process is partially reversed; compare Croatian stol, vol, sol vs. Serbian sto, vo, so (meaning "table", "ox" and "salt").

Sample

The sample text is a reading of The North Wind and the Sun by a 57-year-old female announcer at the Croatian Television Network reading in a colloquial style.[4]

Phonemic transcription

/sjêʋeːrniː lědeniː ʋjêtar i‿sûːnt͡se‿su‿se prěpirali o‿sʋǒjoj snǎːzi || stôɡa ǒdlut͡ʃeː da‿ǒnome ôd‿ɲiːx prǐpadne pôbjeda kǒjiː sʋǔːt͡ʃeː | t͡ʃôʋjeka pûːtnika || ʋjêtar zǎpot͡ʃe snâːʒno pǔːxati | a‿bǔduːt͡ɕi da‿je t͡ʃôʋjek t͡ʃʋr̩̂ːsto dr̩̂ʒao ôdjet͡ɕu | nǎʋali ôːn jôʃ jât͡ʃeː || t͡ʃôʋjek pâːk jôʃ jât͡ʃeː ot‿stûdeni prǐtisnuːt | naʋǔːt͡ʃeː nǎ‿sebe jôʃ ʋîʃeː ôdjet͡ɕeː | dôk‿se ʋjêtar ne‿ǔmoriː i‿prěpustiː‿ɡa tâda sûːnt͡su || ǒnoː u‿pot͡ʃěːtku zǎsija ǔmjereno || kâd‿je t͡ʃôʋjek skînuo suʋǐːʃak ôdjet͡ɕeː | pǒʋiːsi ǒnoː jôʃ jât͡ʃeː ʒêɡu | dôk‿se t͡ʃôʋjek | u‿nemogǔːt͡ɕnosti da‿ǒdoli sǔnt͡ʃeʋoːj toplǐni ne‿sʋǔːt͡ʃeː | i‿ně‿pod͡ʑeː na‿kǔːpaɲe u‿rijěːku tekǔt͡ɕit͡su || prîːt͡ʃa pokǎzujeː da‿je‿t͡ʃêːsto uspjěʃnijeː uʋjerǎːʋaɲe | něgoli nǎːsiːʎe/[23]

Phonetic transcription

[sjêʋeˑrniˑ ɫědeniˑ ʋjêtar i‿sûːnt͡se‿su‿se prěpiraɫi o‿sʋǒjoj snǎːzi || stôɡa ǒdɫut͡ʃeˑ da‿ǒnome ôd‿ɲiˑx prǐpadne pôbjeda kǒjiˑ sʋǔːt͡ʃeˑ | t͡ʃôʋjeka pûːtnika || ʋjêtar zǎpot͡ʃe snâːʒno pǔːxati | a‿bǔduˑt͡ɕi da‿je t͡ʃôʋjek t͡ʃʋr̩̂ːsto dr̩̂ʒao ôdjet͡ɕu | nǎʋali ôːn jôʃ jât͡ʃeˑ || t͡ʃôʋjek pâːk jôʃ jât͡ʃeˑ ot‿stûdeni prǐtisnuˑt | naʋǔːt͡ʃeˑ nǎ‿sebe jôʃ ʋîʃeˑ ôdjet͡ɕeˑ | dôk‿se ʋjêtar ne‿ǔmoriˑ i‿prěpustiˑ‿ɡa tâda sûːnt͡su || ǒnoˑ u‿pot͡ʃěːtku zǎsija ǔmjereno || kâd‿je t͡ʃôʋjek skînuo suʋǐːʃak ôdjet͡ɕeˑ | pǒʋiˑsi ǒnoˑ jôʃ jât͡ʃeˑ ʒêɡu | dôk‿se t͡ʃôʋjek | u‿nemogǔːt͡ɕnosti da‿ǒdoli sǔnt͡ʃeʋoˑj topɫǐni ne‿sʋǔːt͡ʃeˑ | i‿ně‿pod͡ʑeˑ na‿kǔːpaɲe u‿rijěːku tekǔt͡ɕit͡su || prîːt͡ʃa pokǎzujeˑ da‿je‿t͡ʃêːsto uspjěʃnijeˑ uʋjerǎːʋaɲe | něgoɫi nǎːsiˑʎe]

Orthographic version (Croatian)

Sjeverni ledeni vjetar i Sunce su se prepirali o svojoj snazi. Stoga odluče da onome od njih pripadne pobjeda koji svuče čovjeka putnika. Vjetar započe snažno puhati, a budući da je čovjek čvrsto držao odjeću, navali on još jače. Čovjek pak, još jače od studeni pritisnut, navuče na sebe još više odjeće, dok se vjetar ne umori i prepusti ga tada Suncu. Ono u početku zasija umjereno. Kad je čovjek skinuo suvišak odjeće, povisi ono još jače žegu dok se čovjek, u nemogućnosti da odoli sunčevoj toplini, ne svu če i ne pođe na kupanje u rijeku tekućicu. Priča pokazuje da je često uspješnije uvjeravanje negoli nasilje.[23]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Morén (2005:5-6)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Landau et al. (1999:68)
  3. ↑ Kordić (2006:5)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Landau et al. (1999:66)
  5. ↑ Jazić (1977:?), cited in Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:188)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Wayles Brown and Theresa Alt (2004), A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, SEELRC
  7. ↑ Landau et al. (1999:67)
  8. ↑ Trubetskoi, Nikolai S (1969), Principles of phonology. (Grundzüge der Phonologie), University of California Press, p. 59
  9. ↑ Gick et al. (2006:?)
  10. ↑ Wyn Johnson, David Britain (2007), "L-vocalisation as a natural phenomenon: explorations in sociophonology" (PDF), Language Sciences (29): 304
  11. ↑ P. A. Keating (1991). "Coronal places of articulation". In C. Paradis & J.-F. Prunet. The Special Status of Coronals (PDF). Academic Press. p. 35.
  12. ↑ Ćavar (2011:1)
  13. ↑ Barić et al. (1997:49) "Prednji je i složeni samoglasnik, dvoglasnik (diftong) ie. Pri njegovu su izgovoru govorni organi najprije u položaju sličnom kao pri izgovoru glasa i, a onda postupno prelaze u položaj za izgovor glasa e. U hrvatskom književnom jeziku dvoglasnik je ie ravan diftong."
  14. ↑ Kapović (2007:66) "Iako se odraz dugoga jata u kojem ijekavskom govoru možda i može opisati kao dvoglas, on tu u standardu sasma sigurno nije. Taj tobožnji dvoglas treba maknuti iz priručnikâ standardnoga jezika jer nema nikakve koristi od uvođenja fantomskih fonema bez ikakve podloge u standardnojezičnoj stvarnosti."
  15. ↑ Kordić, Snježana (1998). "Diletantski napisana gramatika: recenzija knjige Vinka Grubišića, Croatian Grammar" [An amateurish grammar book: Review of the book Vinko Grubišić, Croatian Grammar]. Republika (in Serbo-Croatian) 54 (1-2): 254. ISSN 0350-1337. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 August 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2012.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Alexander (2006:356)
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Kordić (2006:8)
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Kordić (2006:7)
  19. ↑ Browne (1993:312)
  20. ↑ This is a stylistically marked form: the usual plural form of vrȃg is with -ov- interfix: vrȁgovi; accusative plural: vrȁgove, but the infix is inhibiting the environment conditioning the palatalization, so the short plural form was provided.
  21. ↑ Kenstowicz, Abu-Mansour, and Törkenczy, Two notes on laryngeal licensing, MIT, p. 7
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 "Jednačenje suglasnika po zvučnosti". Pravopis hrvatskog jezika (in Serbo-Croatian).
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Landau et al. (1999:69)

References

External links