The Illative Marker of Monosyllabic Words in Soikkola Ingrian

Abstract

. This article analyses the vowel in the illative marker of monosyllabic nouns which usually copies the quality of the stem vowels. The data come from different questionnaires recorded by Soikkola Ingrian speakers in the 21 st century. The main point of interest is the contradiction between the fact that the vowel in the illative marker copies the stem vowel and the fact that existing descriptions often indicate raising of mid vowels in the stem but not in the illative suffix. Both auditory analysis and acoustic measurements are used to check the correspondence between the quality of the stem and suffix vowels in the illative forms of monosyllabic nouns. The research reveals that there is both interspeaker and intraspeaker variation in the quality of the vowels under discussion, and several different strategies can be used for building the illa-tive marker. The rounded stem vowels öö and oo are opposed to the unrounded ee : if raised in the stem, the latter does not influence the quality of the suffix vowel. In most cases, the quality of the rounded stem and suffix vowels is the same, so a transcription where these vowels are denoted differently is not justified. Pronunciations where both the stem and suffix vowels are half-raised argue for an alternative variant of the Soikkola Ingrian phonological system.