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Inphonology,vowel harmony is aphonological process in which vowelsassimilate ("harmonize") to share certaindistinctive features. Vowel harmony is often confined to the domain of aphonological word, but may extend across word boundaries in certain languages.[1]
Generally, one vowel will trigger a shift in other vowels within the domain, such that the affected vowels match the relevant feature of the trigger vowel. Intervening segments are common between affected vowels, meaning that the vowels do not need to be next to each other for this change to apply, classifying this as a "long-distance" type of assimilation. Common phonological features that define the natural classes of vowels involved in vowel harmony includevowel backness,vowel height,nasalization,roundedness, andadvanced and retracted tongue root.
Certain authors and articles use the termvowel harmony to refer toprogressive (beginning-to-end) vowel assimilation, and useumlaut to refer toregressive assimilation. The termumlaut is also used in a different sense to refer to a type ofvowel gradation, as well as thediacritic that often marks such changes.Metaphony is often used synonymously with vowel harmony, but is typically used to describe historicalsound changes. This article uses the term "vowel harmony" to refer to bothprogressive andregressive assimilatory processes.
Vowel harmony is found in manyagglutinative languages. The given domain of vowel harmony taking effect often spans across morpheme boundaries, andsuffixes andprefixes will usually follow vowel harmony rules. Vowel harmony is also considered anareal feature in some parts of the world, especiallyNorthern andCentral Asia among theTurkic,Mongolic andTungusic language families, as well as other languages in contact with languages from the aforementioned families.
Vowel harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by interveningsegments (usually consonant segments). In other words,harmony refers to the assimilation of sounds that arenot adjacent to each other. For example, a vowel at the beginning of a word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at the end of a word. The assimilation occurs across the entire word in many languages. This is represented schematically in the following diagram:
| before assimilation | after assimilation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| VaCVbCVbC | → | VaCVaCVaC | (Va = type-a vowel,Vb = type-b vowel, C = consonant) |
In the diagram above, theVa (type-a vowel) causes the followingVb (type-b vowel) to assimilate and become the same type of vowel (and thus they become, metaphorically, "in harmony").
The vowel that causes the vowel assimilation is frequently termed thetrigger while the vowels that assimilate (orharmonize) are termedtargets. When the vowel triggers lie within theroot orstem of a word and theaffixes contain the targets, this is calledstem-controlled vowel harmony (the opposite situation is calleddominant).[2] This is fairly common among languages with vowel harmony[citation needed] and may be seen in theHungariandative suffix:
| Root | Dative | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| város | város-nak | 'city' |
| öröm | öröm-nek | 'joy' |
The dative suffix has two different forms-nak/-nek. The-nak form appears after the root with back vowels (o anda are back vowels). The-nek form appears after the root with front vowels (ö ande are front vowels).
Vowel harmony often involves dimensions such as:
| Rose & Walker (2011)[3] | Ko (2018)[4][5][6] | Dimension | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backness Harmony | Palatal harmony | Vowel backness | back or front |
| Round Harmony | Labial harmony | Roundedness | rounded or unrounded |
| Height Harmony | Height harmony | Vowel height | high or low |
| Tongue Root Harmony | Tongue root harmony | Advanced and retracted tongue root | advanced or retracted |
In many languages, vowels can be said to belong to particular sets or classes, such as back vowels or rounded vowels. Some languages have more than one system of harmony. For instance,Altaic languages are proposed to have a rounding harmony superimposed over a backness harmony.
Even among languages with vowel harmony, not all vowels need to participate in the vowel conversions; these vowels are termedneutral. Neutral vowels may beopaque and block harmonic processes or they may betransparent and not affect them.[2] Intervening consonants are also often transparent.
Finally, languages that do have vowel harmony often allow for lexicaldisharmony, or words with mixed sets of vowels even when an opaque neutral vowel is not involved. Van der Hulst & van de Weijer (1995) point to two such situations: polysyllabic trigger morphemes may contain non-neutral vowels from opposite harmonic sets and certain target morphemes simply fail to harmonize.[2] Manyloanwords exhibit disharmony. For example, Turkishvakit, ('time' [from Arabicwaqt]); *vakıt would have been expected. Other examples from Finnish includeolympialaiset ('Olympic games') andsekundäärinen ('secondary') which have both front and back vowels. In standard Finnish, these words are pronounced as they are spelled, but many speakers intuitively apply vowel harmony –olumpialaiset, andsekundaarinen orsekyndäärinen.
Turkic languages inherit their systems of vowel harmony fromProto-Turkic, which already had a fully developed system. The one exception isUzbek, which has lost its vowel harmony due to extensivePersian influence; however, its closest relative,Uyghur, has retained Turkic vowel harmony.
Azerbaijani's system of vowel harmony has both front/back and rounded/unrounded vowels.[9]
| Azerbaijani Vowel Harmony | Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |
| Vowel | e, ə, i | ö, ü | a, ı | o, u |
| Two form suffix (iki şəkilli şəkilçilər) | ə | a | ||
| Four form suffix (dörd şəkilli şəkilçilər) | i | ü | ı | u |
Tatar has no neutral vowels. The vowel é is found only inloanwords. Other vowels also could be found in loanwords, but they are seen as Back vowels. Tatar language also has a rounding harmony, but it is not represented in writing. O and ö could be written only in the first syllable, but vowels they mark could be pronounced in the place where ı and e are written.
| Front | ä | e | i | ö | ü | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | a | ı | í | o | u | é |
Kazakh's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony that is not represented by the orthography.
Kyrgyz's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony, which strongly resembles that of Kazakh.
Turkish has a 2-dimensional vowel harmony system, where vowels are characterised by two features: [±front] and [±rounded]. There are two sets of vocal harmony systems: a simple one and a complex one. The simple one is concerned with thelow vowels e, a and has only the [±front] feature (e front vsa back). The complex one is concerned with thehigh vowels i, ü, ı, u and has both [±front] and [±rounded] features (i front unrounded vsü front rounded andı back unrounded vsu back rounded). The close-mid vowelsö, o are not involved in vowel harmony processes.
| Turkish Vowel Harmony | Front | Back | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |||||
| Vowel | e /e/ | i /i/ | ö /ø/ | ü /y/ | a /a/ | ı /ɯ/ | o /o/ | u /u/ |
| Simple system | e | a | ||||||
| Complex system | i | ü | ı | u | ||||
Turkish has two classes of vowels – front andback. Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels. Therefore, most grammatical suffixes come in front and back forms, e.g.Türkiye'de "in Turkey" butAlmanya'da "in Germany".
| Nom.sg | Gen.sg. | Nom.pl | Gen.pl. | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ip | ipin | ipler | iplerin | 'rope' |
| el | elin | eller | ellerin | 'hand' |
| kız | kızın | kızlar | kızların | 'girl' |
In addition, there is a secondary rule thati andı in suffixes tend to becomeü andu respectively after rounded vowels, so certain suffixes have additional forms. This gives constructions such asTürkiye'dir "it is Turkey",kapıdır "it is the door", butgündür "it is the day",karpuzdur "it is the watermelon".
Not all suffixes obey vowel harmony perfectly.
In the suffix-(i)yor, theo is invariant, while thei changes according to the preceding vowel; for examplesönüyor – "he/she/it fades". Likewise, in the suffix-(y)ken, thee is invariant:Roma'dayken – "When in Rome"; and so is thei in the suffix-(y)ebil:inanılabilir – "credible". The suffix-ki exhibits partial harmony, never taking a back vowel but allowing only the front-voweled variant-kü:dünkü – "belonging to yesterday";yarınki – "belonging to tomorrow".
Most Turkish words do not only have vowel harmony for suffixes, but also internally. However, there are many exceptions.
Compound words are considered separate words with respect to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between members of the compound (thus forms likebu|gün "this|day" = "today" are permissible). Vowel harmony does not apply forloanwords, as inotobüs – from French "autobus". There are also a few native modern Turkish words that do not follow the rule (such asanne "mother" orkardeş "sibling" which used to obey vowel harmony in their older forms,ana andkarındaş, respectively). However, in such words, suffixes nevertheless harmonize with the final vowel; thusannesi – "his/her mother", andvoleybolcu – "volleyballer".
In some loanwords the final vowel is ana,o oru and thus looks like a back vowel, but is phonetically actually a front vowel, and governs vowel harmony accordingly. An example is the wordsaat, meaning "hour" or "clock", a loanword from Arabic. Its plural issaatler. This is not truly an exception to vowel harmony itself; rather, it is an exception to the rule thata denotes a front vowel.
Disharmony tends to disappear through analogy, especially within loanwords; e.g.Hüsnü (a man's name) < earlierHüsni, from Arabichusnî;Müslüman "Moslem, Muslim (adj. and n.)" < Ottoman Turkishmüslimân, from Persianmosalmân.
Tuvan has one of the most complete systems of vowel harmony among the Turkic languages.[11]
Mongolic languages display various vowel harmony systems. While there is some debate,Proto-Mongolic appears to have had a system of backness harmony, from which the modern languages' systems descend.[12]
Mongolian innovates on Proto-Mongolic's system, exhibiting bothtongue root harmony and rounding harmony. The tongue root harmony involves the vowels:/a,ʊ,ɔ/ (+RTR) and/i,u,e,o/ (-RTR). The vowel/i/ is phonetically similar to the -RTR vowels, but is largely transparent to vowel harmony. Rounding harmony only affects the open vowels,/e,o,a,ɔ/. Some sources refer to the primary harmonization dimension as pharyngealization or palatalness (among others), but neither of these is technically correct. Likewise, referring to ±RTR as the sole defining feature of vowel categories in Mongolian is not fully accurate either. In any case, the two vowel categories differ primarily with regards to tongue root position, and ±RTR is a convenient and fairly accurate descriptor for the articulatory parameters involved.[13][14][15]
| -RTR | э[e] | ү[u] | ө[o] | и[i] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +RTR | а[a] | у[ʊ] | о[ɔ] |
Kalmyk Oirat, a western Mongolic language, displays very clear backness harmony. Words may only contain back or front vowels, but may be rounded or unrounded. /y/ alternates with /u/, /ø/ alternates with /o/, /æ/ alternates with /a/, and /i/ has the allophonic alternation [ɨ] in suffixes. /e/ is mostly transparent to vowel harmony.
Korean is an example of a language with a vowel harmony system that is gradually becoming less productive. WhileMiddle Korean had strong vowel harmony, modern Korean only retains it in certain cases such asonomatopoeia,adjectives,adverbs,conjugation, andinterjections. Many native Korean words demonstrate the formerly productive vowel harmony, such as사람 (saram, 'person') and부엌 (bu-eok, 'kitchen').
The current system of Korean vowel harmony is based on the orthographic system where vowels are classified as either positive/light, negative/dark, or neutral. Many scholars treat the positive vowels as +RTR and the negative and neutral vowels as -RTR. The basic conjugations for Korean's tenses demonstrate this vowel harmony, using the +RTR vowel /a/ or -RTR vowel /ʌ/ depending on the last vowel of the verb/adjective stem.
| Positive | Neutral | Negative | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verb/Adjective infinitive form | 알다 [aɭ.da] | 보다 [po.da] | 내다 [nɛ.da] | 예쁘다 [je.p͈ɯ.da] | 피다 [pʰi.da] | 먹다 [mʌk.da] | 주다 [t͡ɕu.da] |
| Non-past tense marker | 아 [a] | 어 [ʌ] | |||||
| (uncontracted) Conjugated form | 알아 [a.ɾa] | 보아 [po.a] | 내어 [nɛ.ʌ] | 예쁘어 [je.p͈ɯ.ʌ] | 피어 [pʰi.ʌ] | 먹어 [mʌ.kʌ] | 주어 [t͡ɕu.ʌ] |
Note that the vowel harmony does not spread to subsequent morphemes, such as the polite ending 요 [jo], which uses a +RTR vowel, but occurs the same on words that take the +RTR tense marker.
Persian is a language which includes various types of regressive and progressive vowel harmony in different words and expressions.[16]
In Persian, progressive vowel harmony only applies to prepositions/post-positions when attached to pronouns.
| Preposition/Post-Position | Pronoun | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Be (To) | man (I) | Behem (to me) |
| Az (From) | man (I) | Azam (from me) |
| Ba (With) | man (I) | Baham (with me) |
| Ra (At/For) | man (I) | Mara (at/for me) |
| to (you) | Toro (at/for you) |
In Persian, regressive vowel harmony, some features spread from the triggering non-initial vowel to the target vowel in the previous syllable. The application and non-application of this backness harmony which can also be considered rounding harmony.
| Verb | Result of Rounding Harmony |
|---|---|
| Be-do (to run) | Bodo |
| Be-kon (to do) | Bokon |
| Be-ro (to go) | Boro |
| Be-kosh (to kill) | Bokosh |
Many, though not all, Uralic languages show vowel harmony between front and back vowels. Vowel harmony is often hypothesized to have existed inProto-Uralic, though its original scope remains a matter of discussion.
Vowel harmony is found inNganasan and is reconstructed also forProto-Samoyedic.
Hungarian has a system offront,back, andintermediate (neutral) vowels and some vowel harmony processes. The basic rule is that words including at least one back vowel get back vowel suffixes (karba – in(to) the arm), while words excluding back vowels get front vowel suffixes (kézbe – in(to) the hand). Single-vowel words which have only the neutral vowels (i,í oré) are unpredictable, bute takes a front-vowel suffix.
| Front | e | é | i | í | ö | ő | ü | ű |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | a | á | - | - | o | ó | u | ú |
In Hungarian language there are long, and short vowels
Long vowels compared to short ones are quite simply voiced for a longer period of time. Hungarian long vowels aretwo units long compared to other Uralic language Finnish'sthree units long vowels. In order for two vowels to belong-short pairs, the long vowel pronounced short must beidentical to its short pair, and vice-versa. In the case of thefour exceptions, this isnot applicable because - contrary to their written form - the four exceptions arenot two pairs of long, and short vowels, but vowels with pronunciation difference that isnot only the length
In writing the long of such vowel pairs are marked with stick-like accents most of the time compared to its dot-accented, or non-accented versions
In the four exceptions case the stick-like accent (á [a:],é [e:]) refer to long length most if not all the time
In practice these long and short vowels sometimes lengthen, or shorten due to agglutinations. Most if not all the time this change is with written difference (meaning that the accent becomes different according)
It can happen that an exceptional vowel is gaining, or losing an accent regardless of it not being the long, or the short pair of the other
There are cleft lip, and non-cleft lip vowel pairs. Cleft lip vowels approach [ɛ] sound when pronounced compared to its non-cleft lip vowel pairs. All these letters (or sounds if you will) other thane [ɛ], andé [e:] are marked with double accents (both double dot, and double sticks)
Words with such sounds areoften agglutinated using cleft lip vowels also
Naturally sincee [ɛ], andé [e:] are also cleft lip (by definition, not by accent on letter) with these as the last vowel of a word the following examples are also valid
Unrounded front vowels (orIntermediate orneutral vowels) can occur together with eitherback vowels (e.g.répa carrot,kocsi car) orrounded front vowels (e.g.tető,tündér), butrounded front vowels andback vowels can occur together only in words of foreign origins (e.g.sofőr = chauffeur, French word for driver). The basic rule is that words including at least one back vowel take back vowel suffixes (e.g.répában in a carrot,kocsiban in a car), while words excluding back vowels usually take front vowel suffixes (except for words including only the vowelsi,í, andé, for which there is no general rule, e.g.lisztet againsthidat, orcéloz againstrémes).
| open | middle | closed | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back("low") | a á | o ó | u ú | |
| Front("high") | unrounded(neutral) | e é | i í | |
| rounded | ö ő | ü ű | ||
Some other rules and guidelines to consider:
Grammatical suffixes in Hungarian can have one, two, three, or four forms:
An example on basic numerals:
| -kor(at, for time) | -ban/-ben(in) | -hoz/-hez/-höz(to) | -t/-ot/-at/-et/-öt(accusative) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | (regular stem) | hat (6) | hatkor nyolckor háromkor – egykor négykor kilenckor tízkor ötkor kettőkor | hatban nyolcban háromban százban | hathoz nyolchoz háromhoz százhoz | hatot |
| (low-vowel stem) | nyolc (8) három (3) száz (100) | nyolcat hármat százat | ||||
| Front | unrounded(neutral) | egy (1) négy (4) kilenc (9) tíz (10) | egyben négyben kilencben tízben ötben kettőben | egyhez négyhez kilenchez tízhez | egyet négyet kilencet tízet | |
| rounded | öt (5) kettő (2) | öthöz kettőhöz | ötöt kettőt | |||
Hungarian language is a consonant oriented language that makes vowel harmony possible, but the vowels in agglutinations can not be changed according to free will. Some of such vowels even change the meaning of the word
For example it wasmentioned that the last cleft lip vowel in the root of the word induces an agglutination with also at least one cleft lip vowel in it, however this is not always the case due to certain agglutinations are constrained. One good example is the-kor agglutination that can not take any other vowel, buto
There are further examples of vowel constraints in agglutinations not only for cleft lip-ness with some agglutination possessing
The vowel in these forms are only short, or only long
In the following examples the used vowels in the agglutinations change the meaning
As you can see in the last example's agglutination oftévézők is withlong vowel. This resulted in anoun, not averb. Thelong vowel renders meaning completely detached of the other two examples' context. The other two are in a context with onlyshort vowels, with the rest of their context is the following:
Likewise using the same agglutination used totévézők, the wordutazók is also withlong vowel, that is also anoun againstutazok with ashort vowel that is likewise averb
Vowel harmony occurred inSouthern Mansi.
In theKhanty language, vowel harmony occurs in the Eastern dialects, and affects both inflectional and derivational suffixes. The Vakh-Vasyugan dialect has a particularly extensive system of vowel harmony:[17]
| Front | /æ/ | /ø/ | /y/ | /i/ | /ɪ/ | /ʏ/ | /e/ | /œ/ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | /ɑ/ | /o/ | /u/ | /ɯ/ | /ʌ/ | /ʊ/ | /ɔ/ |
| Front | /æ/ | /ø/ | /y/ | /i/ | /ɪ/ | /ʏ/ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | /ɑ/ | /o/ | /u/ | /ɯ/ | /ʌ/ | /ʊ/ |
Trigger vowels occur in the first syllable of a word, and control the backness of the entire word. Target vowels are affected by vowel harmony and are arranged in seven front-back pairs of similar height and roundedness, which are assigned the archiphonemes A, O, U, I, Ɪ, Ʊ.
The vowels/e/,/œ/ and/ɔ/ appear only in the first syllable of a word, and are thus strictly trigger vowels. All other vowel qualities may act in both roles.
Vowel harmony is lost in the Northern and Southern dialects, as well as in the Surgut dialect of Eastern Khanty.
Most varieties of theMari language have vowel harmony.
TheErzya language has a limited system of vowel harmony, involving only two vowel phonemes:/e/ (front) versus/o/ (back).
Moksha, the closest relative of Erzya, has no phonemic vowel harmony, though/ə/ has front and backallophones in a distribution similar to the vowel harmony in Erzya.
Vowel harmony is found in most of theFinnic languages. It has been lost inLivonian and in StandardEstonian, where the front vowelsüäö occur only in the first (stressed) syllable.South EstonianVõro (andSeto) language as well as some [North] Estonian dialects, however, retain vowel harmony.
In theFinnish language, there are three classes of vowels – front,back, andneutral, where each front vowel has a back vowel pairing. Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endings – but notenclitics – have only archiphonemic vowels U, O, A, which are realized as either back[u,o,ɑ] or front[y,ø,æ] inside a single word. From vowel harmony it follows that the initial syllable of each single (non-compound) word controls the frontness or backness of the entire word. Non-initially, the neutral vowels are transparent to and unaffected by vowel harmony. In the initial syllable:
For example:
Some dialects that have a sound change opening diphthong codas also permit archiphonemic vowels in the initial syllable. For example, standard 'ie' is reflected as 'ia' or 'iä', controlled by noninitial syllables, in the Tampere dialect, e.g.tiä ←tie butmiakka ←miekka
... as evidenced bytuotteessa (not*tuotteessä). Even ifphonologically front vowels precede the suffix-nsa, grammatically it is preceded by a word controlled by a back vowel. As shown in the examples, neutral vowels make the system unsymmetrical, as they are front vowels phonologically, but leave the front/back control to any grammatical front or back vowels. There is little or no change in the actual vowel quality of the neutral vowels.
As a consequence, Finnish speakers often have problems with pronouncing foreign words which do not obey vowel harmony. For example,olympia is often pronouncedolumpia. The position of some loans is unstandardized (e.g.chattailla/chättäillä) or ill-standardized (e.g.polymeeri, sometimes pronouncedpolumeeri, andautoritäärinen, which violate vowel harmony). Where a foreign word violates vowel harmony by not using front vowels because it begins with a neutral vowel, then last syllable generally counts, although this rule is irregularly followed.[18] Experiments indicate that e.g.miljonääri always becomes (front)miljonääriä, butmarttyyri becomes equally frequently bothmarttyyria (back) andmarttyyriä (front), even by the same speaker.
With respect to vowel harmony, compound words can be considered separate words. For example,syyskuu ("autumn month" i.e. September) has bothu andy, but it consists of two wordssyys andkuu, and declinessyys·kuu·ta (not*syyskuutä). The same goes for enclitics, e.g.taaksepäin "backwards" consists of the wordtaakse "to back" and-päin "-wards", which gives e.g.taaksepäinkään (not*taaksepäinkaan or*taaksepainkaan). If fusion takes place, the vowel is harmonized by some speakers, e.g.tälläinen protällainen ←tämän lainen.
Some Finnish words whose stems contain only neutral vowels exhibit an alternating pattern in terms of vowel harmony when inflected or forming new words through derivation. Examples includemeri "sea",meressä "in the sea" (inessive), butmerta (partitive), not*mertä;veri "blood",verestä "from the blood" (elative), butverta (partitive), not*vertä;pelätä "to be afraid", butpelko "fear", not*pelkö;kipu "pain", butkipeä "sore", not*kipea.
Helsinki slang has slang words that have roots violating vowel harmony, e.g.Sörkka. This can be interpreted as Swedish influence.
TheVeps language has partially lost vowel harmony.
Vowel harmony is present in allYokutsan languages and dialects. For instance,Yawelmani has 4 vowels (which additionally may be eitherlong or short). These can be grouped as in the table below.
| Unrounded | Rounded | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i | u |
| Low | a | ɔ |
Vowels in suffixes must harmonize with either/u/ or its non-/u/ counterparts or with/ɔ/ or non-/ɔ/ counterparts. For example, the vowel in theaorist suffix appears as/u/ when it follows a/u/ in the root, but when it follows all other vowels it appears as/i/. Similarly, the vowel in the nondirective gerundial suffix appears as/ɔ/ when it follows an/ɔ/ in the root; otherwise it appears as/a/.
| Word | IPA | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| -hun/-hin | (aorist suffix) | |
| muṭhun | [muʈhun] | 'swear (aorist)' |
| giy̓hin | [ɡijˀhin] | 'touch (aorist)' |
| gophin | [ɡɔphin] | 'take of infant (aorist)' |
| xathin | [xathin] | 'eat (aorist)' |
| -tow/-taw | (nondirective gerundial suffix) | |
| goptow | [ɡɔptɔw] | 'take care of infant (nondir. ger.)' |
| giy̓taw | [ɡijˀtaw] | 'touch (nondir. ger.)' |
| muṭtaw | [muʈtaw] | 'swear (nondir. ger.)' |
| xattaw | [xatːaw] | 'eat (nondir. ger.)' |
In addition to the harmony found in suffixes, there is a harmony restriction on word stems where in stems with more than one syllable all vowels are required to be of the same lip rounding and tongue height dimensions. For example, a stem must contain all high rounded vowels or all low rounded vowels, etc. This restriction is further complicated by (i) long high vowels being lowered and (ii) anepenthetic vowel[i] which does not harmonize with stem vowels.
There is some evidence for vowel harmony according tovowel height orATR in the prefix i3/e- in inscriptions from pre-SargonicLagash (the specifics of the pattern have led a handful of scholars to postulate not only an/o/ phoneme, but even an/ɛ/ and, most recently, an/ɔ/)[19] Many cases of partial or completeassimilation of the vowel of certain prefixes and suffixes to one in the adjacent syllable are reflected in writing in some of the later periods, and there is a noticeable though not absolute tendency for disyllabic stems to have the same vowel in both syllables.[20] What appears to bevowel contraction inhiatus (*/aa/, */ia/, */ua/ > a, */ae/ > a, */ue/ > u, etc.) is also very common.
Vowel harmony occurs to some degree in many other languages, such as
Although vowel harmony is the most well-known harmony, not all types of harmony that occur in the world's languages involve only vowels. Other types of harmony involve consonants (and is known asconsonant harmony). Rarer types of harmony are those that involvetone or both vowels and consonants (e.g.postvelar harmony).
Some languages have harmony processes that involve an interaction between vowels and consonants. For example,Chilcotin has a phonological process known asvowel flattening (i.e. post-velar harmony) where vowels must harmonize withuvular andpharyngealized consonants.
Chilcotin has two classes of vowels:
Additionally, Chilcotin has a class of pharyngealized "flat" consonants[tsˤ,tsʰˤ,tsʼˤ,sˤ,zˤ]. Whenever a consonant of this class occurs in a word, all preceding vowels must be flat vowels.
| [jətʰeɬtsˤʰosˤ] | 'he's holding it (fabric)' |
| [ʔapələsˤ] | 'apples' |
| [natʰákʼə̃sˤ] | 'he'll stretch himself' |
If flat consonants do not occur in a word, then all vowels will be of the non-flat class:
| [nænɛntʰǽsʊç] | 'I'll comb hair' |
| [tetʰǽskʼɛn] | 'I'll burn it' |
| [tʰɛtɬʊç] | 'he laughs' |
Other languages of this region of North America (the Plateau culture area), such asSt'át'imcets, have similar vowel–consonant harmonic processes.
Syllabic synharmony was a process in theProto-Slavic language ancestral to all modernSlavic languages. It refers to the tendency of frontness (palatality) to be generalised across an entire syllable. It was therefore a form of consonant–vowel harmony in which the property 'palatal' or 'non-palatal' applied to an entire syllable at once rather than to each sound individually.
The result was that back vowels were fronted afterj or a palatal consonant, and consonants were palatalised beforej or a front vowel. Diphthongs were harmonized as well, although they were soon monophthongized because of a tendency to end syllables with a vowel (syllables were or became open). This rule remained in place for a long time, and ensured that a syllable containing a front vowel always began with a palatal consonant, and a syllable containingj was always preceded by a palatal consonant and followed by a front vowel.
A similar process occurs inSkolt Sami, where palatalization of consonants and fronting of vowels is asuprasegmental process applying to a whole syllable. Suprasegmental palatalization is marked with the letterʹ, which is aModifier letter prime, for example in the wordvääʹrr 'mountain, hill'.
The Mawo dialect ofNorthern Qiang displays rhotic harmony, where vowels must align with the previous vowel'srhoticity.[32]
Languages such asNez Perce andChukchi have vowel harmony systems which can not be easily explained in terms of height, backness, tongue root, or rounding. In Nez Perce, Katherine Nelson (2013)[8] proposes that the two sets of vowels ("dominant" /i a o/ and "recessive" /i æ u/) be considered as distinct "triangles" of vowel space, each by themselves maximally dispersed, where one set is somewhat retracted (further back) in comparison to the dominant. Note here that /i/ can behave as a dominant or recessive vowel depending on the root it is in; it is not transparent to vowel harmony.[8]
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