Actualities and methodological challenges of comparative experimental sound research in standard Baltic languages

The present paper discusses the main topicalities and methodological challenges of comparative experimental research of the Lithuanian and Latvian sounds. There are still few studies on the sound systems of the contemporary standard Baltic languages that use modern experimental and statistical methods and are based on the same principles. Since the inventories of vowel and consonant phonemes in both languages have differences, it was important: a) to explore on the same principles and with the same methods the spectral characteristics of vowels and consonants in Standard Lithuanian and Standard Latvian at the beginning of the 21st century and to compare their main distinctive acoustic and other features; b)to discuss the choice of International Phonetic Alphabet equivalents forLithuanian and Latvian phonemes showing variations of common vowel and consonant classifications of both languages. There are some other methodological issues to consider: peculiarities are important when selecting material for different languages, developing new terminology in national languages, preparing for further investigations, setting common goals, and so on. Experimental acoustic investigations on Lithuanian and Latvian sound inventories should be continued in the future. The studies should address the influence of vowels of different quality on consonants; analysis should focus not only on phonologically significant differences but also on phonetic variants of phonemes