ANALYSIS OF PALATALIZED AND NON-PALATALIZED CONSONANTS IN THE RUSSIAN SPEECH OF THE JAPANESE

The purpose of this study is to provide a description of the nature of palatalized and nonpalatalized consonants in the Russian and Japanese languages on the basis of comparative-typological studies as well as to characterize the manifestations of Russian-Japanese interference at the speech perception level. The basic research methods are the comparative-typological method, empirical method, generalization of analysis results to identify the phonetic interference, method of phonological oppositions, and rules for establishing the independence of phonemes. The comparative (or contrastive) method was used as a linguistic forecasting tool which gives a more or less precise indication of possible deviations in the speech of foreign language learners and is the best initial stage of a bilingual speech behavior description. The analysis showed the following results: 1) at the theoretical level, it was found that palatalization in the Russian language is the primary articulation while in the Japanese language it is secondary, characterized by a lesser degree of intensity; Russian and Japanese soft consonants are independent phonemes; not all consonants in Russian and Japanese can become palatalized: some sounds, when being articulated, are already palatal; others always remain hard; 2) at the practical level, consideration was given to the positions of Russian palatalized consonants followed by vowels as well as phonetic mistakes made by Japanese students when pronouncing sounds in these positions; the forecast accent in the Russian speech of the Japanese was confirmed. These findings may help in solving theoretical problems of general, specific, comparative linguistics and general phonetic interference problems as well as contribute to solving practical problems of overcoming a foreign accent of the Japanese by arranging educational materials in textbooks and developing effective methods for overcoming phonetic interference.