Alena Muravyova (HSE University) Syllable structure in Andic languages: data-driven approach

In this talk I will present results of the data-driven research of syllable structure of Andic languages. Despite the fact that the syllable structure is described in every grammatical description of the Andic languages, in my work I try to get the same result using a database of dictionaries (Moroz et al. 2023). To this data, I applied the LexStat method (List 2012) in order to automatically match cognacy and then used the Levenshtein distance search function for comparing syllabic structures of cognates. As a result of a pairwise comparison of cognates from different languages, the general tendency of the Andic languages to prioritize the CV-syllable. What is more, I came to particular conclusions about the beginning of the word (strict openness of the first syllable in Ahvakh, high tolerance of the closed syllable in Botlikh and Andi) and about the end of the word (mainly open syllable in Ahvakh, closed syllable in Botlikh, Chamalal and Bagvalal). In addition, I have separately examined the processes of reducing consonants r, l, m, n, j, w, b in Andic languages. The results I have obtained are of scientific interest, as they testify to the historical processes in the Andic languages.