Probability and distribution patterns of vowel phonemes in the Oroqen language of the PRC: comparative study

Abstract

The paper analyzes the probability and distribution patterns of vowels in the Oroqen language of the PRC. Six frequency parameters were taken for analysis: 1) syllable types, 2) word form length, 3) consonant and vowel load, 4) long vs short vowels, 5) hard vs soft vowels, 6) labial vs non-labial vowels. Studying syllable type (V, VC, CV, CVC) and the word form length revealed the following discoveries. First, CV-type turned out the most frequent in Oroqen, ac-counting for 47,64 % of all syllables found in the material. Second, disyllabic and trisyllabic words prevailed, accounting for 75,7 % compared to 64,8 % in Evenki and 85,5 % in Kumandin. Additionally, the consonant load vs vowel load was calculated. It was found that in Oroqen, the consonant-vowel proportion (1,5/1) was similar to Evenki and Mansi, a little higher than in Turkic languages, and a little lower than in Khanty. However, this difference proved statistically insignificant. Another finding was that short vowels significantly pre-vailed over long ones, accounting for 68,52–93,11 % of all vowels used. The hard vowels ac-counted for 24,52–46,41 %, neutral ones – 26,8–44,86 %, only slightly exceeding soft vowels in frequency load (17,13–43,51%) of all vowels used. Non-labial vowels proved to be more frequent (65,76–91,78 %) than labial ones (8,22–34,24 %). In general, the results show a high similarity of Oroqen to the Turkic and Ob-Ugric languages with regard to parameters 4 and 6. At the same time, the difference was found with regard to parameters 1–3 and 5.