PHONETIC ASPECTS OF ROMANIAN CONSONANTS
PHONETIC ASPECTS OF ROMANIAN CONSONANTS

Summary/Abstract: The consonant system of Romanian has long been debated. The bone of contention was the interpretation of the allophones of /k/, /g/, and the fact that each consonant can become palatalized on the surface, as it is derived from underlying sequences of a consonant and a high vowel /i/: C+ /i/→ Ci. Based on this palatalization, some linguists proposed a rather complicated consonantal inventory treating palatalized consonants as underlying. The present paper proposes a simple consonantal inventory accepted by mainstream phoneticians and discusses various features of consonant phonemes specific to Romanian only, such as final non-syllabic /i/, the alveolar trill, glides and semiconsonants, accompanied by interpretations of their spectograms and waveforms respectively. The study reaches the conclusion that a comprehensive acoustic study of Romanian consonants can shed more light on controversial phonetic aspects of the consonant system of Romanian.

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