Veronika Tambievna Dzakhova
A study was conducted on the acoustic characteristics of the vowel realized in the modern Ossetian (Iron dialect) language in place of the letter “o”. The study aims to establish the presence or absence of quantitative and qualitative reduction of the Ossetian vowel /o/. The research material includes Ossetian words in which the vowel /o/ occurs in both stressed and unstressed positions. Loanwords from the Russian language are also included in the experimental material to determine the extent of their phonetic assimilation – specifically, whether the vowels in loanwords undergo the same phonetic processes as those in native Ossetian words. Digital recordings were provided by four native Ossetian speakers with normative pronunciation. The methods used in the study include auditory, instrumental (analysis of oscillograms and spectrograms), and statistical analysis. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by its very nature, as there is currently no data in scientific discourse regarding the reduction of the vowel /o/ in Ossetian. The study established that in modern Ossetian, the vowel /o/ undergoes qualitative reduction only in unstressed syllables of words borrowed from Russian. In native Ossetian words, both qualitative and quantitative reduction of the vowel /o/ are absent.