Phonology of the Ukrainian language
This article deals with the
phonology
of the standard
Ukrainian language
.
Stress
[
edit
]
Stress is phonemic in Ukrainian. With most Ukrainian nouns, the stress falls on either the final vowel of the stem or the initial vowel of the inflection. In a few nouns the stress may be further forward.
[
clarification needed
]
The position is generally fixed for the various cases of the noun (though inflection stress shifts to the last vowel of the stem if the inflection is a
zero suffix
), but may change with number (stem stress in both singular and plural, e.g. теа?тр ~ теа?три 'theater'; stem stress in the singular and inflection stress in the plural, e.g. ж??нка ~ ж?нки? 'woman'; and so on for all permutations.)
The pattern with adjectives is similar to that of nouns, but does not differ between singular and plural (all stem stress or all inflection stress). In some inflection-stressed adjectives, stress shifts to the stem in the
comparative
.
With most verbs, stress falls on a syllable in the stem. That syllable may differ between the perfective and imperfective aspects (verbs with 'shifting stress'), but otherwise the stress remains on the same syllable for all inflections. A small group of verbs which do not shift for aspect and have
е
in their stems bear stress on the inflection. That stress is always on the last syllable of the word apart from in the future imperfective, where it is on the same syllable as in the infinitive (INF нести?, FUT.NPFV.3sg нести?ме 'carry').
With numerals, stress placement may differ between ordinal and cardinal forms.
For names, stress may shift between given names (Богда?н, Рома?н) and family names (Бо?гдан, Ро?ман), and between patronymics (?ва?нович, Богда?нович) and family names (?вано?вич, Богдано?вич).
Vowels
[
edit
]
Ukrainian has the six monophthong
phonemes
shown below.
/?/
is a retracted close-mid front vowel
[
??
]
.
[1]
Ukrainian has no phonemic distinction between long and short vowels; however, unstressed vowels are shorter and tend to be more centralized.
[2]
The unstressed vowel allophones are as follows:
[3]
- /i/
remains more or less
[
i
]
.
- /?/
and
/?/
approach
[
e
]
, which may be a shared
allophone
for the two phonemes.
- /a/
is realized as
[
?
]
.
- /?/
is realized as
[
o
]
, or more towards
/u/
if it is
followed by a syllable
with
/i/
or
/u/
.
- /u/
is realized as
[
?
]
.
Consonants
[
edit
]
In the table above, whenever two consonants share a cell, the one to the left is voiceless, while the one to the right is voiced.
Phonetic details:
- There is no complete agreement about the phonetic nature of
/?/
. According to some linguists, it is pharyngeal
[
?
]
(when devoiced,
[
ħ
]
or sometimes
[
x
]
in weak positions).
[4]
According to others, it is glottal
[
?
]
.
[5]
[6]
[7]
- After voiceless consonants, word-final
/m/
,
/l/
,
/r/
are voiceless
[
m?
]
,
[
l?
]
,
[
r?
]
.
[8]
For
/r/
, this only happens after
/t/
.
[9]
- /w/
is most commonly bilabial
[
β?
]
before vowels but can alternate with labiodental
[
?
]
(most commonly before
/i/
),
[10]
and it can be a true labiovelar
[
w
]
before
/?/
or
/u/
.
[11]
It is also vocalized to
[u?]
[
clarification needed
]
before a consonant at the beginning of a word, after a vowel before a consonant or after a vowel at the end of a word.
[10]
[12]
If
/w/
occurs before a voiceless consonant and not after a vowel, the voiceless articulation
[
?
]
is also possible.
[11]
- /r/
is often realized as a single tap
[
?
]
.
- /t,
d,
d?,
n,
n?,
s,
s?,
z,
z?,
t?s,
t?s?,
d?z,
d?z?/
are dental
[
t?
,
d?
,
d??
,
n?
,
n??
,
s?
,
s??
,
z?
,
z??
,
t??s?
,
t??s??
,
d??z?
,
d??z??
]
,
[13]
while
/t?,
l,
l?,
r,
r?/
are alveolar
[
t?
,
l
,
l?
,
r
,
r?
]
.
[14]
- The group of palatalized consonants consists of 10 phonemes:
/j,
d?,
z?,
l?,
n?,
r?,
s?,
t?,
t?s?,
d?z?/
. All except
/j/
have a soft and a hard variant. There is no agreement about the nature of the palatalization of
/r?/
; sometimes, it is considered as a semi-palatalized
[
clarification needed
]
consonant.
[15]
The labial consonants
/p,
b,
m,
f/
only have 'semi-palatalized' versions, and
/w/
has only the 'hard' variant.
[16]
The palatalization of the consonants
/?,
?,
?,
k,
x,
t??,
?,
d??/
is weak; they are usually treated rather as the allophones of the respective hard consonants, not as separate phonemes.
[17]
- Unlike Russian and several other Slavic languages, Ukrainian does not have
final devoicing
for most
obstruents
, as can be seen, for example, in
в?з
"cart", which is pronounced
[??iz]
ⓘ
, not
*[??is]
.
[11]
- The fricative articulations
[
v
,
?
]
are voiced allophones of
/f,
x/
respectively if they are voiced before other voiced consonants. (See
#Consonant assimilation
.)
/x,
?/
do not form a perfect voiceless-voiced phoneme pair, but their allophones may overlap if
/?/
is devoiced to
[x]
(rather than
[h]
). In the standard language,
/f,
w/
do not form a voiceless-voiced phoneme pair at all, as
[v]
does not phonemically overlap with
/w/
, and
[?]
(voiceless allophone of
/w/
) does not phonemically overlap with
/f/
.
[11]
When two or more consonants occur word-finally, a vowel is
epenthesized
under the following conditions:
[18]
Given a consonantal grouping
C
1
(
ь
)C
2
(
ь
), ‘
C
’ being any consonant, the vowel is inserted between the two consonants and after the
ь
. A vowel is not inserted unless
C
2
is
/k/
,
/w/
,
/l/
,
/m/
,
/r/
, or
/t?s/
. Then:
- If
C
1
is
/w/
,
/?/
,
/k/
, or
/x/
, the epenthesized vowel is always
[o]
.
- No vowel is epenthesized if the
/w/
is derived from a Common Slavic vocalic *l, for example,
/w?wk/
(see below).
- If
C
2
is
/l/
,
/m/
,
/r/
, or
/t?s/
, then the vowel is
[e]
.
- The combinations
/-stw/
and
/-sk/
are not broken up.
- If
C
1
is
/j/
(
й
), both the form with the epenthetic vowel (according to the above rules) and the form without it can be found.
Alternation of vowels and semivowels
[
edit
]
The semivowels
/j/
and
/w/
alternate with the vowels
/i/
and
/u/
respectively. The semivowels are used in syllable codas: after a vowel and before a consonant, either within a word or between words:
[
citation needed
]
- в?н
?
де?
/?win
i
?d?/
('he's coming')
- вона?
й
де
/w??na
?
j
d?/
('she's coming')
- в?н
?
вона?
/?win
i
w??na/
('he and she')
- вона?
й
в?н
/w??na
j
?win/
('she and he');
- У
томи?вся
в
же
/
u
t??m?ws?a
?
w
??/
('already gotten tired')
- У
же?
в
томи?вся
/
u
???
w
t??m?ws?a/
('already gotten tired')
- В?н
у
томи?вся.
/?win
u
t?m?ws?a/
('He's gotten tired.')
- В?н
у
ха?т?.
/?win
u
?xat???i/
('He's inside the house.')
- Вона?
в
ха?т?.
/w??na
w
?xat???i/
('She's inside the house.')
- п?д
у
чи?ти
/pid
u
?t???t?/
('to learn/teach (a little more)')
- ви?
в
чити
/?w?
w
t???t?/
('to have learnt')
This feature distinguishes Ukrainian phonology from Russian and Polish, two related languages with many cognates.
Consonant assimilation
[
edit
]
Ukrainian has assimilatory
voicing
: voiceless obstruents are voiced when preceding voiced obstruents.
[19]
(Voiced sonorants do not trigger voicing.)
- наш
[na?]
('our')
- наш д?д
[n??
?d
???
id]
('our grandfather')
There is no such assimilation in the reverse direction (voicing of voiceless obstruents
following
voiced obstruents).
[19]
With a few exceptions, there is no word-final or assimilatory devoicing in Ukrainian. The exceptions are
легко
,
вогко
,
н?гт?
,
к?гт?
,
дьогтю
,
д?гтяр
, and their derivatives:
/?/
may then be devoiced to
[
h
]
or even merge with
/x/
.
[11]
Unpalatalized dental consonants
/n,
t,
d,
t?s,
d?z,
s,
z,
r,
l/
become palatalized if they are followed by other palatalized dental consonants
/n?,
t?,
d?,
t?s?,
d?z?,
s?,
z?,
r?,
l?/
. They are also typically palatalized before the vowel
/i/
. Historically, contrasting unpalatalized and palatalized articulations of consonants before
/i/
were possible and more common, with the absence of palatalization usually reflecting that regular sound changes in the language made an
/i/
vowel actually evolve from an older, non-palatalizing
/?/
vowel.
Ukrainian grammar
still allows for
/i/
to alternate with either
/?/
or
/?/
in the regular inflection of certain words. The absence of consonant palatalization before
/i/
has become rare, however, but is still allowed when the ? succeeding a consonant originated from older о, evidenced by о preserved in some word forms such as ст?л / стола ("table", N sg./G sg.).
[11]
While the labial consonants
/m,
p,
b,
f,
w/
cannot be phonemically palatalized, they can still precede one of the iotating vowels
? ? ьо ю я
, when many speakers replace the would-be sequences
*|m?,
p?,
b?,
f?,
w?|
with the consonant clusters
/mj,
pj,
bj,
fj,
wj/
, a habit also common in nearby Polish.
[11]
The separation of labial consonants from
/j/
is already hard-coded in many Ukrainian words (and written as such with an apostrophe), such as in
В'ячеслав
/wjat????slaw/
"
Vyacheslav
",
?м'я
/i?mja/
"name" and
п'ять
/pjat?/
"five".
[
citation needed
]
The combinations of labials with iotating vowels are written without the apostrophe after consonants in the same morpheme, e.g.
свято
/?s?w(j)at?/
"holiday",
цвях
"nail" (but
зв'язок
"union", where
з-
is a prefix), and in some loanwords, e. g.
бюро
"bureau".
Dental sibilant consonants
/t?s,
d?z,
s,
z/
become palatalized before any of the labial consonants
/m,
p,
b,
f,
w/
followed by one of the iotating vowels
? ? ьо ю я
, but the labial consonants themselves cannot retain phonemic palatalization. Thus, words like
свято
/?s?w(j)at?/
"holiday" and
сват
/swat/
"matchmaker" retain their separate pronunciations (whether or not an actual
/j/
is articulated).
[11]
Sibilant consonants (including affricates) in clusters assimilate with the place of articulation and palatalization state of the last segment in a cluster. The most common case of such assimilation is the verbal ending
-шся
in which
|?s?a|
assimilates into
/s?ːa/
.
[11]
Dental plosives
/t,
t?,
d,
d?/
assimilate to affricate articulations before coronal affricates or fricatives
/t?s,
d?z,
s,
z,
t?s?,
d?z?,
s?,
z?,
t??,
d??,
?,
?/
and assume the latter consonant's place of articulation and palatalization. If the sequences
|t.t?s,
d.d?z,
t.t?s?,
d.d?z?,
t.t??,
d.d??|
regressively assimilate to
*/t?s.t?s,
d?z.d?z,
t?s?.t?s?,
d?z?.d?z?,
t??.t??,
d??.d??/
, they gain geminate articulations
/t?sː,
d?zː,
t?s?ː,
d?z?ː,
t??ː,
d??ː/
.
[11]
Deviations of spoken language
[
edit
]
There are some typical deviations which may appear in spoken language (often under the influence of
Russian
).
[20]
They are usually considered phonetic errors by pedagogists.
[21]
- [
?
]
for
/
?
/
- [
t??
]
for
/
t??
/
and
[?t??]
or even
[
?ː
]
for
[?t??]
- [r?]
for
/r/
,
[b?]
for
/b/
,
[v?]
for
/w/
in certain words (
Ха?
р
к?в
,
О
б
,
любо?
в
’ю
)
- [v]
or
[f]
(the latter in syllable-final position) for
[w
~
u?
~
β?
~
?
~
?]
(
любо?
в
,
роби?
в
,
в
ари?ти
,
в
ода?
),
[10]
in effect also turning
/f,
w/
into a true voiceless-voiced phoneme pair, which isn't present in the standard language
- Final-obstruent devoicing
Historical phonology
[
edit
]
Modern standard Ukrainian descends from
Common Slavic
and is characterized by a number of
sound changes
and morphological developments, many of which are shared with other
East Slavic languages
. These include:
- In a newly closed
syllable
, that is, a syllable that ends in a
consonant
, Common Slavic *o and *e mutated into
/i/
if the following
vowel
was one of the
yers
(*? or *?); for example, CSl. *
p
e
ktь
→ Ukr.
п
?
ч
(
p
i
?
"oven") & CSl. *
n
o
sъ
→ Ukr.
н
?
с
(
n
i
s
"nose").
[22]
[23]
- Pleophony
: The Common Slavic combinations, *CoRC and *CeRC, where R is either *r or *l, become in Ukrainian:
- CorC gives
CoroC
(Common Slavic *borda gives Ukrainian
boroda
,
борода?
)
- ColC gives
ColoC
(Common Slavic *bolto gives Ukrainian
boloto
,
боло?то
)
- CerC gives
CereC
(Common Slavic *berza gives Ukrainian
bereza
,
бере?за
)
- CelC gives
ColoC
(Common Slavic *melko gives Ukrainian
moloko
,
молоко?
)
- The Common Slavic nasal vowel *? is reflected as
/ja/
; a preceding
labial consonant
generally was not palatalized after this, and after a
postalveolar
it became
/a/
. Examples: Common Slavic *p?t? became Ukrainian
/pjat?/
(
п’ять
); Common Slavic *tel? became Ukrainian
/t??l?a/
(
теля?
); and Common Slavic *kur??? became Ukrainian
/kur?t??a/
(
курча?
).
[
citation needed
]
- Common Slavic *? (Cyrillic ?), generally became Ukrainian
/i/
except:
[
citation needed
]
- word-initially, where it became
/ji/
: Common Slavic *(j)?sti became Ukrainian
??сти
/?jist?/
- after the postalveolar sibilants where it became
/a/
: Common Slavic *le??ti became Ukrainian
/l???at?/
(
лежа?ти
)
- Common Slavic *i and *y are both reflected in Ukrainian as
/?/
[
citation needed
]
- The Common Slavic combination -C?jV, where V is any vowel, became
-C?ːV
, except:
[
citation needed
]
- if C is labial or
/r/
where it became -CjV
- if V is the Common Slavic *e, then the vowel in Ukrainian mutated to
/a/
, e.g., Common Slavic *?it?je became Ukrainian
/???t?ːa/
(
життя?
)
- if V is Common Slavic *?, then the combination became
/?j/
, e.g., genitive plural in Common Slavic *my??j? became Ukrainian
/m????j/
(
мише?й
)
- if one or more consonants precede C then there is no doubling of the consonants in Ukrainian
- Sometime around the early thirteenth century, the
voiced velar stop
lenited to
[?]
(except in the cluster *zg).
[24]
Within a century,
/?/
was reintroduced from Western European loanwords and, around the sixteenth century,
[?]
debuccalized
to
[?]
.
[25]
- Common Slavic combinations *dl and *tl were simplified to
/l/
, for example, Common Slavic *mydlo became Ukrainian
/?m?l?/
(
ми?ло
).
[
citation needed
]
- Common Slavic *?l and *?l became
/?w/
. For example, Common Slavic *v?lk? became
/w?wk/
(
вовк
) in Ukrainian.
[
citation needed
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Rusanivs’kyj, Taranenko & Zjabljuk (2004
:104)
- ^
Rusanivs’kyj, Taranenko & Zjabljuk (2004
:407)
- ^
Buk, Ma?utek & Rovenchak (2008)
, §2.2
- ^
Danyenko & Vakulenko (1995
:12)
- ^
Pugh & Press (2005
:23)
- ^
The sound is described as "laryngeal fricative consonant" (
гортанний
щ?линний приголосний
) in the official orthography: '§ 14. Letter H' in Укра?нський правопис, Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 2012, p. 19 (
see e-text
)
- ^
Укра?нська мова: енциклопед?я, Kyiv, 2000, p. 85.
- ^
Danyenko & Vakulenko (1995
:6, 8)
- ^
Danyenko & Vakulenko (1995
:8)
- ^
a
b
c
?ovtobrjux & Kulyk (1965
:121?122)
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
Buk, Ma?utek & Rovenchak (2008)
- ^
Rusanivs’kyj, Taranenko & Zjabljuk (2004
:522?523)
- ^
Danyenko & Vakulenko (1995
:8?10)
- ^
Danyenko & Vakulenko (1995
:8 and 10)
- ^
Ponomariv (2001
:16, 20)
- ^
Ponomariv (2001
:14?15)
- ^
Buk, Ma?utek & Rovenchak (2008)
- ^
Carlton (1972
:?)
- ^
a
b
Mascaro & Wetzels (2001
:209)
- ^
"Фонетика й вимова - Олександр Пономар?в"
.
ponomariv-kultura-slova.wikidot.com
. Retrieved
2022-11-11
.
- ^
"Електронна б?бл?отека ?нституту журнал?стики"
.
journlib.univ.kiev.ua
. Retrieved
2022-11-11
.
- ^
Becker (1980
:400)
- ^
Derksen (2008
:357, 393)
- ^
Shevelov (1977
:145)
- ^
Shevelov (1977
:148)
Sources
[
edit
]
- Becker, Lee A. (1980).
"On the Phonetic Nature of the Origin of Ukrainian Ikavism"
.
Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes
.
22
(3): 400?407.
- Buk, Solomija; Ma?utek, Jan; Rovenchak, Andrij (2008), "Some properties of the Ukrainian writing system",
Glottometrics
,
16
: 63?79,
arXiv
:
0802.4198
,
Bibcode
:
2008arXiv0802.4198B
- Carlton, T.R. (1972),
A Guide to the Declension of Nouns in Ukrainian
, Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press
- Danyenko, Andrii; Vakulenko, Serhii (1995),
Ukrainian
, Lincom Europa,
ISBN
978-3-929075-08-3
- Derksen, Rick (2008).
Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 4)
. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
- Mascaro, Joan; Wetzels, W. Leo (2001). "The Typology of Voicing and Devoicing".
Language
.
77
(2): 207?244.
doi
:
10.1353/lan.2001.0123
.
S2CID
28948663
.
- Pohribnyj, M.I., ed. (1986),
Орфоеп?чний словни
, Kiev: Radjans’ka ?kola
- Pompino-Marschall, Bernd; Steriopolo, Elena; ?ygis, Marzena (2016), "Ukrainian",
Journal of the International Phonetic Association
,
47
(3): 349?357,
doi
:
10.1017/S0025100316000372
,
S2CID
232344731
- Ponomariv, O.D., ed. (2001),
Сучасна укра?нська мова: П?дручник
, Kyiv: Lybid’
- Pugh, Stefan; Press, Ian (2005) [First published 1999],
Ukrainian: A Comprehensive Grammar
, London: Routledge
- Rusanivs’kyj, V. M.; Taranenko, O. O.; Zjabljuk, M. P.; et al. (2004).
Укра?нська мова: Енциклопед?я
.
ISBN
978-966-7492-19-9
.
- Shevelov, George Y.
(1977).
"On the Chronology of
h
and the New
g
in Ukrainian"
(PDF)
.
Harvard Ukrainian Studies
.
1
(2). Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute: 137?152. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 2019-01-05.
- Shevelov, George Y. (1993), "Ukrainian", in
Comrie, Bernard
; Corbett, Greville (eds.),
The Slavonic Languages
, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 947?998
- ?ovtobrjux, M.A., ed. (1973),
Укра?нська л?тературна вимова ? наголос: Словник ? дов?дник
, Kiev: Nakova dumka
- ?ovtobrjux, M.A.; Kulyk, B.M. (1965).
Курс сучасно? укра?нсько? л?тературно? мови. Частина I
. Kiev: Radjans’ka ?kola.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Bahmut, Alla Josypivna (1980).
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