Uyghur phonology
Uyghur phonology
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Uyghur phonology

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Uyghur phonology

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.

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 /ɪ/ (e.g., بىلىم /bɪlɪm/ 'knowledge') and back /ɯ/ (e.g., تىلىم /tɯlɯm/ 'my language'); these two sounds are in complementary distribution,[clarification needed] but phonological analyses claim that they play a role in vowel harmony and are separate phonemes.

The high vowels /ɪ/, /ʊ/, and /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 [ʊ̥kɑ] 'older brother', pütün [pʏ̥tʏn] 'entire', ikki [ɪ̥kkɪ] 'two'.

/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:

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.

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