more pronunciation

[Robert Orr]

The issue of the phonemic status of i/y is certainly a tricky one, and the
morphophonemic problems make it even more so.

What may play an importnat role in the future is the growing
degree of acceptance of forms such as "Kyrgyzstan" in Russian. This will
probably be a topic to be revisited in, say 20 or 30 years.

> > Avanesov himself warns against pronouncing v izbe as
> > (v,iz,b,e), ot Ivana as (at,ivan-). And with the velars, Avanesov
> > admits that the "soft" pronunciation is very widespread, e.g.
> > k Ivanu (k,ivanu), smex i gore (s,m,ex,igor-).
> >
>
> The examples with the velars certainly do not invalidate the
> understanding of i/y as a single phoneme, as there is no phonemic
> distinction between "hard" and "soft" velars (or wasn't until very
> recently - it all depends on what you think the present tense of
> tkat' is), the soft allophone appearing precisely before i, so that
> /k/+/i/ would naturally be realised as [k,]+[i].
>
>