Segmental Phonetics and Phonology

This article surveys the major topics of Caucasian phonetics and phonology focusing on those aspects that bear broader implications for general phonetics and phonological theory. The article first presents an acoustic phonetic treatment of phonemic inventories in the three Caucasian families that involves both a review of recent instrumental data on the topic as well as a new analysis of experimental acoustic data. The focus of the phonetic analysis is obstruents with different laryngeal features, typologically unusual segments, small vocalic inventories, and pharyngealization. The second part reviews treatments of Caucasian phonotactics, primarily of South Caucasian consonant clusters that play a crucial role in the discussion on production vs. perception in phonology. The article concludes with a collection of phonological alternations that have the potential to bear broader theoretical implications.