Pozicionālās skaņu pārmaiņas svešvārdos saistītā runā

The most common positional sound changes in international words in connected speech are analysed. By phonetics, connected speech is poorly researched. In connected speech, word pronunciation is often careless, so different positional sound changes occur, especially when the words are hard to pronounce due to unusual sound combinations and/or multisyllabic words. In Latvian, international words are part of the lexicon that is hard to pronounce. Speech corpora – LATE-sarunas, LATE-mediji and fonLATE – were used for collecting data and conducting research. To analyse data collected from speech corpora, the computer program PRAAT was used. Different positional sound changes can be observable in international words: reduction of vowels, deletion of sounds, deletion of syllable/syllables, metathesis or transposition of sounds, and lengthening of vowels. Other phenomena caused by the deletion of a vowel are also mentioned, for example, the vocalisation of the consonant [ʝ], the formation of an alveolar fricative. Rapid, careless speech promotes the appearance of positional sound changes. Fewer positional sound changes are in the slow, careful speech. The situation and topic of the speech also affect the precision of pronunciation of international words. In the speech situation, the more familiar the international word is, the less attention is given to precise pronunciation.