Tensione laringea e consonantismo. Il dialetto armeno di Gavar (Nor Beyazet)

This article aims to illustrate the phonetic and phonological properties displayed by the stop
and affricate consonants of the Armenian dialect of Gavar, a small town settled on the lake
Sevan, in the Republic of Armenia, which is a secondary derivation of the Eastern Anatolia
dialect of Bayazet, completely deleted during the World War I. Such a consonant system is
based on three series, traditionally described as (I) plain voiceless, (II) aspirated voiceless
and (III) voiced stops. Acoustic analysis reveals that the relevant property distinguishing between
series II and series III is represented by the laryngeal tenseness, formally accountable
either by the phonological feature [±stiff vocal folds] or by the feature [±slack vocal folds].
Such a representation is consistent with comparative data within Indo-European language
family.