ფონოტაქტიკური მიმართებანი ქართული ენის თანხმოვნებს შორის (სამწევრა თანხმოვანთკომპლექსების ანალიზი)

Abstract

Numerous papers have been devoted to the study of phonotactic issues of the Georgian language. The interest in the phonotactics of the Georgian language is primarily due to the great diversity of the Georgian consonant clusters, their length within a single morpheme (as a rule, the root morpheme) varies from 2 to 6. Such rich research material gives an opportunity of structuring consonant clusters in different ways. The paper is aimed to study the trinomial consonant clusters in the Georgian language in order to identify the tendencies which define the structure of Georgian consonant clusters. There are 210 trinomial consonant clusters in Georgian. The research material was divided into 2 main groups: Group 1 – trinomial consonant clusters comprising the so-called harmonic clusters; Group 2 –consonant clusters including /m, n, r, l, v/ sonorant consonants (without harmonic clusters), As a result of the analysis of Group1, the following was found: According to the ability of the formation of trinomial clusters, cq and tx harmonic clusters are the most productive (each of them forms 7 three-member clusters); in addition, with the harmonic clusters mostly sonorant consonants /r, l, m, n, v/ are combined. The latter are mainly found in the position after the harmonic clusters; and only sonorants /r, m, n/ occur in the pre-harmonic position; in some cases, however, /b, p, p’/ plosive consonants are found as well. Group 2 is divided into two subgroups, with the following structural types in each: consonant clusters with sonorants in the final position, having the following structures: CS1S2, S1CS2, C1C2S (S stands for the sonorant consonant, C – for the non-sonorant one); consonant clusters without sonorants in the final position, having the following structures: SC1C2, S1S2C. An insignificant number of C1C2C3 type clusters was not included in the two main groups. The paper covers each above-mentioned structural type and reveals certain phonotactic regularities and tendencies, e.g. the following: For consonant clusters of CS1S2 type, S2≠v; For clusters of CS1S2 type, if S2=r, usually, S1=v; For consonant clusters of C1C2S type, mostly fricatives occur before sonorant consonants. The sequence fricative+fricative is the most common, especially, such sequence of two fricatives when a cluster close to the harmonic one is formed (i.e. they form introversive sequence of two fricatives, both being identically either voiced or voiceless) is particularly frequent; the sequence plosive+fricative, forming an introversive sequence as well, is relatively rare (as the plosive consonant can be only /b/ or /p/ phoneme. The above-mentioned and other regularities presented in the paper, established as a result of the analysis of each type of the trinomial consonant clusters, reflect the phonotactic relations between the consonants of the Georgian language, which are manifested in trinomial consonant clusters.