KBD: Turkish Kabardian Phonetics and Phonology

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Matthew Gordon will be investigating the sound system of Kabardian, a language spoken in the Caucasus region of Russian and in Turkey. This project will focus on the understudied and endangered variety of Kabardian spoken in Turkey. Kabardian is of great interest from a phonetic and phonological standpoint since its sound system possesses a number of typologically unusual features, including ejective fricatives, an extensive set of place contrasts, pervasive coarticulatory effects of consonants on vowels, and complex interactions between morphology and prosody. Examination of these and other phonetic and phonological properties of Kabardian will enhance the scientific community's understanding of the range of cross-linguistic variation attested in sound systems. The project will also provide multimedia documentation of Turkish Kabardian in the form of audio recordings and both web-based and written materials. The collected data will potentially be a valuable resource in ongoing language preservation efforts by the Kabardian community in Turkey. In addition, the project will provide training to a Linguistics graduate student, who is also a member of the Turkish Kabardian community.