Acoustic Analysis of the Affricates of the Georgian Language

 Presented as a talk at the International Conference dedicated to the Georgian Language Day: "Language Standardization: Trends and Challenges (LSTC)", 14 April 2025, Tbilisi State University, Tbilisi.

Abstract

The research material used in this talk is male and female audio recordings stored in the sound archive of the TSU Experimental Phonetic Laboratory and processed with the digital speech analysis programmes – Praat and WaveSurfer. Alveolar and postalveolar affricates are analysed in initial, intervocalic and final position with [a], [i] and [u] vowels: voiced – [dz], [dʒ], aspirated – [ʦ^h], [ʧ^h], ejectives – [ʦ’], [ʧ’].The phase of closure of the voiced affricate in the initial position can be voiced, partially voiced or voiceless, and the release – voiced, partially or rarely devoiced. In the intervocalic position, both phases are always voiced. The closure phase of the final affricate is voiced to varying degrees, and the release is partially voiced or devoiced. The closure of voiceless affricates is usually presented without periodic oscillations, but sometimes the onset is voiced in the intervocalic and final positions, especially in the case of an incomplete closure, which is characteristic of intervocalic affricates. The duration of the noise of the post-alveolar affricates exceeds the duration of the stop consonants and is less long compared to the alveolar ones. In all positions, the aspirated affricate is characterised by a long noise. The maximum duration of the noise is characteristic of the final affricates.The duration of the noise of the voiced [dz] consonant is 50-128 ms, the duration of the [ʦ^h] consonant is 94-245 ms and the duration of the [ʦ’] consonant is 54-160 ms; the duration of the noise of the voiced [dʒ] is 35-101 ms, the duration of the consonant [ʧ^h] is 77-225 ms and the duration of the consonant [ʧ’] is 54-160 ms; The duration of the silent period after the noise of the [ʦ’] and [ʧ’] ejective consonants varies between 8-60 ms. The silent period is more characteristic of initial and intervocalic positions.The range of the spectrum in the middle of the noise of the pre-alveolar affricates in all positions is 2470-8000 Hz according to the average data from two speakers, and for the post-alveolar affricates are 1600-8000 Hz. It should be noted that the lower limit of the noise is on average 240 Hz higher for the female speaker.The change caused by labialisation (with the coarticulation of the [u] vowel), the lowering of the spectrum of the noise, is more noticeable for female pronunciation, and as a result of palatalisation (under the influence of the vowel [i]), the increase in the duration of the noise is more characteristic of male pronunciation.