Things to look at in Kyrgyz dialects

Linguistic topics

What to look at

• Rounding harmony systems
• How far through a word harmony spreads
• Monopthongisation — phonetic and phonological
• Tonogenesis
• Acoustic properties of vowel system
  • [reduction and diphthongisation of] high vowels (Russified in Bishkek, Kazakhified in Talas?)
  • low vowels as related to rounding harmony
• The 9th vowel, phonemic?
• Figure out the stress system
• Sonority
  • /r.l/ → [r.d], [r.l]?
  • sonority of /n/ suffix-initially like glide?

By

• Age
• Urbanisation (city, village, steppe)
• Multilingualism (esp. influence from Russian (Bishkek), Kazakh (Talas), Uzbek (Osh))
• Tribe, apparently

Goals in Kyrgyzstan, round 1

• Improve own Kyrgyz skills
• Begin collecting lesser, non-experimental data
• Prepare experiments
  • Consult with & work with local scholars
  • Design experiments
  • File for human subjects approval
• Data collection plan
  • Decide on areas of most interest
  • Plan travel

Goals in Kyrgyzstan, round 2

• Travel and collect data
  • At least two people in at least two villages in each of 47 regions
• …