VOWEL HARMONY
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'Vowel harmony' is a type of ''long-distance'' assimilatory phonological process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other.
Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). In other words, ''harmony'' refers to the assimilation of sounds that are ''not'' 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 sometimes occurs across the entire word. This is represented schematically in the following diagram:
:
In the diagram above, the Va (type-a vowel) causes the following Vb (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 the ''trigger'' while the vowels that assimilate (or ''harmonize'') are termed ''targets''. In most languages, the vowel triggers lie within the root of a word while the affixes added to the roots contain the targets. This may be seen in the Hungarian dative suffix:
:
The dative suffix has two different forms ''-nak/-nek''. The ''-nak'' form appears after the root with back vowels (''a'' and ''o'' are both back vowels). The ''-nek'' form appears after the root with front vowels (''ö'' and ''e'' are front vowels).
Another example: Turkish ev-ler-imiz "our houses" (house-{PL}-{1PL POSS}) vs. dam-lar-ımız "our roofs" (roof-{PL}-{1PL POSS}).
Harmony assimilation may ''spread'' either from the beginning of the word to the end or from the end to the beginning. ''Progressive'' harmony (a.k.a. ''left-to-right'' harmony) proceeds from beginning to end; ''regressive'' harmony (a.k.a. ''right-to-left'' harmony) proceeds from end to beginning. Languages that have both prefixes and suffixes often have both progressive and regressive harmony. Languages that primarily have prefixes (and no suffixes) usually have only regressive harmony — and vice versa for primarily suffixing languages.
Vowel harmony often involves dimensions such as
★ Vowel height (i.e. high, mid, or low vowels)
★ Vowel backness (i.e. front, central, or back vowels)
★ Vowel roundedness (i.e. rounded or unrounded)
★ tongue root position (i.e. advanced or retracted tongue root, abbrev.: ±ATR)
★ Nasalization (i.e. oral or nasal) ''(in this case, a nasal consonant is usually the trigger)''
In many languages, vowels can be said to belong to particular classes, such as back vowels or rounded vowels, etc. Some languages have more than one system of harmony. For instance, Altaic languages have a rounding harmony superimposed over a backness harmony.
In some languages, not all vowels participate in the vowel conversions — these vowels are termed either ''neutral'' or ''transparent''. Intervening consonants are also often transparent. In addition to these transparent segments, many languages have ''opaque'' vowels that block vowel harmony processes.
Finally, languages that do have vowel harmony sometimes have words that fail to harmonize. This is known as ''disharmony''. Many loanwords exhibit disharmony, either within a root (e.g., Turkish/Turkic ''vakit''/''waqit'', "time" [from Arabic ''waqt''], where °''vakıt''/°''waqıt'' would have been expected) or in suffixes (e.g., Turkish saat-ler "(the) hours" [hour-PL, from Arabic ''sâ`a''], where ''saat-lar'' would have been expected). In Turkish, disharmony tends to disappear through analogy, especially within loanwords. Suffixes drop disharmony to a lesser extent, e.g. ''Hüsnü'' (a man's name) < previously ''Hüsni'', from Arabic h''usnî''; ''müslümân'' "Moslem, Muslim (adj. and n.)" < °''müslimân'', from Arabic ''muslim'').
:''Related articles: Germanic umlaut, I-mutation, Metaphony''.
The term ''vowel harmony'' is used in two different senses, explained below.
In the first sense, ''vowel harmony'' refers to any type of vowel harmony: that is, both ''progressive'' and ''regressive'' vowel harmony. When used in this sense, the term ''vowel harmony'' is synonymous with the term ''metaphony''.
In the second sense, ''vowel harmony'' refers only to ''progressive'' vowel harmony (beginning-to-end). For ''regressive'' harmony, the term ''umlaut'' is used. In this sense, ''metaphony'' is the general term while ''vowel harmony'' and ''umlaut'' are both sub-types of metaphony. (Note that the term ''umlaut'' is also used in a different sense to refer to a type of vowel gradation.)
See Neutralization, archiphoneme, underspecification for an explanation of ''archiphoneme'' and ''neutralization'' with an example of a Tuvan archiphoneme involved in vowel harmony.
Vowel harmony appears in many Uralic and almost all Altaic languages.
In the Finnish language, there are three classes of vowels -- ''front'', ''back'', and ''neutral'', where each front vowel has a back vowel pairing. Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endings — but not enclitics — have only archiphonemic vowels, which are realized as either A, U, O or Ä, Y, Ö, but never both, 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:
# a back vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with back (or neutral) vowels, e.g. ''pos+ahta+(t)a'' → ''posahtaa''
# a front vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with front (or neutral) vowels, e.g. ''räj+ahta+(t)a'' → ''räjähtää''.
# a neutral vowel acts like a front vowel, but does not control the frontness or backness of the word: if there are back vowels in non-initial syllables, the word acts like it began with back vowels, even if they come from derivational endings, e.g. ''sih+ahta+(ta)'' → ''sihahtaa'' cf. ''sih+ise+(t)a'' → ''sihistä''
For example:
★ ''kaura'' begins with back vowel → ''kauralla''
★ ''kuori'' begins with back vowel → ''kuorella''
★ ''sieni'' begins without back vowels → ''sienellä'' (not
★ ''sienella'')
★ ''käyrä'' begins without back vowels → ''käyrällä''
★ ''tuote'' begins with back vowels → ''tuotteeseensa''
★ ''kerä'' begins with a neutral vowel → ''kerällä''
★ ''kera'' begins with a neutral vowel, but has a noninitial back vowel → ''keralla''
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'' but ''miakka'' ↠''miekka''.
Vowel harmony is a grammaticalized feature of phonotactics, thus it may not work as expected from pure phonology, as evidenced by ''tuotteeseensa'' (not
★ ''tuotteeseensä''). Even if phonologically front vowels precede the suffix ''-nsa'', grammatically it is preceded by a back vowel-controlled word. 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 pronounced ''olumpia''. The position of some loans is unstandardized (e.g. ''chattailla''/''chättäillä'' ) or ill-standardized (e.g. ''polymeeri'', ''autoritäärinen'', 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 counts. For example, ''Wikipediassa'' — the initial syllable ''-pe-'' of the second word would require the final vowel to be ''-ä'', but because it isn't, the process degrammaticalizes, becoming pure phonotactics.
With respect to vowel harmony, compound words can be considered separate words. For example, ''syyskuu'' ("autumn month" i.e. September) has both ''u'' and ''y'', but it consists of two words ''syys'' and ''kuu'', and declines ''syys·kuu·ta'' (not
★ ''syyskuutä''). The same goes for enclitics, e.g. ''taaksepäin'' "backwards" consists of the word ''taakse'' "to back" and ''-päin'' "-wards". If fusion takes place, the vowel is harmonized by some speakers, e.g. ''tälläinen'' pro ''tällainen'' ↠''tämän lainen''.
Hungarian, like its distant relative Finnish, has the same system of ''front'', ''back'', and ''intermediate'' (neutral) vowels. The basic rule is that words with front ("high") vowels get front vowel suffixes (''kéz'be''' - in(to) the hand), back ("low") vowel words back suffixes (''kar'ba''' - in(to) the arm).
The only essential difference in classification between Hungarian and Finnish is that Hungarian does not observe the difference between Finnish 'ä' [æ] and 'e' [e] — the Hungarian front vowel 'e' [æ] is the same as the Finnish front vowel 'ä'.
''Intermediate'' or ''neutral'' vowels are usually counted as ''front'' ones, since they are formed that way, the difference being that neutral vowels can occur along with back vowels in Hungarian word bases (e.g. ''r'é'p'a''' carrot, ''k'o'cs'i''' car). The basic rule is that words with neutral and back vowels usually take back suffixes (e.g. ''répá|ban'' in a carrot, ''kocsi|ban'' in a car).
The suffix rules for words with both kinds of suffixes are the following:
★ The last syllable counts: ''sof'Å‘'r|h'ö'z, nü'a'nsz|sz'a'l, gener'á'l|'á's, októb'e'r|b'e'n''
★
★ A regular exception is ''i/Ã'' and ''é'' (but not usually ''e''): they are transparent for the rule, so only the other sounds will be taken into consideration, e.g. ''p'a'pÃr|h'o'z, k'u'plé|h'o'z, m'a'rék|h'o'z, k'o'nflis|h'o'z''
★ Some words can take either front or back suffixes: ''f'a'rmer|b'a'n'' or ''farm'e'r|b'e'n''
While most grammatical suffixes in Hungarian come in either one form (eg. ''-kor'') or two forms (front and back, eg. ''-ban/-ben''), some suffixes have an additional form for rounded vowels (such as ''ö, ő, ü'' and ''ű''), e.g. ''hoz/-hez/-höz''. An example on basic numerals:
Mongolian is similar. Front vowels in Mongolian are considered feminine, while back vowels are considered masculine.
Tatar has no neutral vowels. The vowel é is found only in loanwords. Other vowels also could be found in loanwords, but they are seen as Back vowels. Tatar language also has a rounding harmony, but it isn't represented in writing. O and ö could be written only in the first syllable, but vowels they mark could be pronounced in place where ı and e are written.
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, which strongly resembles the system in Kyrgyz.
Kyrgyz's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony.
Turkish has a 2-dimensional vowel harmony system, where vowels are characterised by two features: [±front] and [±rounded].
Turkish has two classes of vowels -- ''front'' and ''back''. 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" but ''kapı'da''' "at the door".
In addition, there is a secondary rule that ''i'' and ''ı'' tend to become ''ü'' and ''u'' respectively after rounded vowels, so certain suffixes have additional forms. This gives constructions such as ''Türkiye''dir''' "it is Turkey", ''kapı'dır''' "it is the door", but ''gün'dür''' "it is day", ''palto'dur''' "it is the coat".
Compound words are considered separate words with respect to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between members of the compound (thus forms like ''bu''|''gün'' "today" are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes (such as ''-iyor''); there are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule (such as ''anne'' "mother"). In such words suffixes harmonize with the final vowel; thus ''İstanbul''dur''' "it is İstanbul".
Vowel harmony is present in all Yokutsan languages and dialects. For instance, Yawelmani has 4 vowels (which additionally may be either long or short). These can be grouped as in the table below.
In vowels in suffixes must harmonize with either or its non- counterparts or with or non- counterparts. For example, the vowel in the aorist suffix appears as when it follows a in the root, but when it follows all other vowels it appears as . Similarly, the vowel in the nondirective gerundial suffix appears as when it follows a in the root; otherwise it appears as .
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) an epenthetic vowel which does not harmonize with stem vowels.
There are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive, negative, and neutral. These categories loosely follow the front (positive) and mid (negative) vowels. Traditionally, Korean had strong vowel harmony; however, this rule is no longer observed strictly in modern Korean. In modern Korean, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia, adjectives, adverbs, conjugation, and interjections. The vowel ㅡ(eu) is considered a partially neutral and a partially negative vowel. There are other traces of vowel harmony in modern Korean: many native Korean words tend to follow vowel harmony such as 사람 (saram), which means person, and 부엌 (Bueok), which means kitchen.
Proponents of Korean as an Altaic language use the existence of vowel harmony in Korean to support their argument.
Modern Japanese lacks vowel harmony, but some consider it evident that such a process must have existed at one time. Linguists point to the word "funabashi" (船橋, ship's bridge), which is a compound of "fune" (船, ship) and "hashi" (橋, bridge). Linguists theorize that the transformation of "e" to "a" is due to a vestigial system of vowel harmony (the voicing of "h" as "b" is due to rendaku). Some linguists present this phenomenon as evidence that Japanese is an Altaic language.
Vowel harmony occurs in many other languages, such as
★ Akan languages,
★ several Bantu languages such as Standard Lingala,
★ dialects of Catalan language
★ Coeur d’Alene,
★ Coosan languages,
★ Dusun languages,
★ Lingala language,
★ Maiduan languages,
★ Manchu,
★ Nez Percé,
★ Nilotic languages,
★ Takelma,
★ Telugu,
★ Sumerian,
★ Utian languages,
★ Warlpiri.
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 as consonant harmony). Rarer types of harmony are those that involve tone 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 as ''vowel flattening'' (i.e. post-velar harmony) where vowels must harmonize with uvular and pharyngealized consonants.
Chilcotin has two classes of vowels:
★ "flat" vowels
★ non-"flat" vowels
Additionally, Chilcotin has a class of pharyngealized "flat" consonants . Whenever a consonant of this class occurs in a word, all preceding vowels must be flat vowels.
If flat consonants do not occur in a word, then all vowels will be of the non-flat class:
Other languages of this region of North America (the Plateau culture area), such as St'át'imcets, have similar vowel-consonant harmonic processes.
★ Altaic languages
★ Hungarian language
★ Uralic languages
★ Turkic languages
★ Turkish language
★ Korean language
★ Consonant harmony
★ Metaphony
★ Germanic umlaut
★ I-mutation
★ A Little Close Harmony: Sounds of a language ‘echoing’ each other
★ Jacobson, Leon Carl. (1978). ''DhoLuo vowel harmony: A phonetic investigation''. Los Angeles: University of California.
★ Krämer, Martin. (2003). ''Vowel harmony and correspondence theory''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
★ Li, Bing. (1996). ''Tungusic vowel harmony: Description and analysis''. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
★ Shahin, Kimary N. (2002). ''Postvelar harmony''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub.
★ Smith, Norval; & van der Hulst, Harry (Eds.). (1988). ''Features, segmental structure and harmony processes'' (Pts. 1 & 2). Dordrecht: Foris. ISBN 90-6765-399-3 (pt. 1), ISBN 90-6765-430-2 (pt. 2 ) .
★ Vago, Robert M. (Ed.). (1980). ''Issues in vowel harmony: Proceedings of the CUNY Linguistic Conference on Vowel Harmony, 14th May 1977''. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
★ Vago, Robert M. (1994). Vowel harmony. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), ''The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics'' (pp. 4954-4958). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Explanation
Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). In other words, ''harmony'' refers to the assimilation of sounds that are ''not'' 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 sometimes occurs across the entire word. This is represented schematically in the following diagram:
:
| before assimilation | after assimilation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 'Va'C''Vb''C''Vb''C | '→' | 'Va'C''Va''C''Va''C | (Va = type-a vowel, Vb = type-b vowel, C = consonant) |
In the diagram above, the Va (type-a vowel) causes the following Vb (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 the ''trigger'' while the vowels that assimilate (or ''harmonize'') are termed ''targets''. In most languages, the vowel triggers lie within the root of a word while the affixes added to the roots contain the targets. This may be seen in the Hungarian dative 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 (''a'' and ''o'' are both back vowels). The ''-nek'' form appears after the root with front vowels (''ö'' and ''e'' are front vowels).
Another example: Turkish ev-ler-imiz "our houses" (house-{PL}-{1PL POSS}) vs. dam-lar-ımız "our roofs" (roof-{PL}-{1PL POSS}).
Harmony assimilation may ''spread'' either from the beginning of the word to the end or from the end to the beginning. ''Progressive'' harmony (a.k.a. ''left-to-right'' harmony) proceeds from beginning to end; ''regressive'' harmony (a.k.a. ''right-to-left'' harmony) proceeds from end to beginning. Languages that have both prefixes and suffixes often have both progressive and regressive harmony. Languages that primarily have prefixes (and no suffixes) usually have only regressive harmony — and vice versa for primarily suffixing languages.
Features of vowel harmony
Vowel harmony often involves dimensions such as
★ Vowel height (i.e. high, mid, or low vowels)
★ Vowel backness (i.e. front, central, or back vowels)
★ Vowel roundedness (i.e. rounded or unrounded)
★ tongue root position (i.e. advanced or retracted tongue root, abbrev.: ±ATR)
★ Nasalization (i.e. oral or nasal) ''(in this case, a nasal consonant is usually the trigger)''
In many languages, vowels can be said to belong to particular classes, such as back vowels or rounded vowels, etc. Some languages have more than one system of harmony. For instance, Altaic languages have a rounding harmony superimposed over a backness harmony.
In some languages, not all vowels participate in the vowel conversions — these vowels are termed either ''neutral'' or ''transparent''. Intervening consonants are also often transparent. In addition to these transparent segments, many languages have ''opaque'' vowels that block vowel harmony processes.
Finally, languages that do have vowel harmony sometimes have words that fail to harmonize. This is known as ''disharmony''. Many loanwords exhibit disharmony, either within a root (e.g., Turkish/Turkic ''vakit''/''waqit'', "time" [from Arabic ''waqt''], where °''vakıt''/°''waqıt'' would have been expected) or in suffixes (e.g., Turkish saat-ler "(the) hours" [hour-PL, from Arabic ''sâ`a''], where ''saat-lar'' would have been expected). In Turkish, disharmony tends to disappear through analogy, especially within loanwords. Suffixes drop disharmony to a lesser extent, e.g. ''Hüsnü'' (a man's name) < previously ''Hüsni'', from Arabic h''usnî''; ''müslümân'' "Moslem, Muslim (adj. and n.)" < °''müslimân'', from Arabic ''muslim'').
Vowel harmony & umlaut terminology
:''Related articles: Germanic umlaut, I-mutation, Metaphony''.
The term ''vowel harmony'' is used in two different senses, explained below.
In the first sense, ''vowel harmony'' refers to any type of vowel harmony: that is, both ''progressive'' and ''regressive'' vowel harmony. When used in this sense, the term ''vowel harmony'' is synonymous with the term ''metaphony''.
In the second sense, ''vowel harmony'' refers only to ''progressive'' vowel harmony (beginning-to-end). For ''regressive'' harmony, the term ''umlaut'' is used. In this sense, ''metaphony'' is the general term while ''vowel harmony'' and ''umlaut'' are both sub-types of metaphony. (Note that the term ''umlaut'' is also used in a different sense to refer to a type of vowel gradation.)
Vowel harmony, archiphonemes, and underspecification
See Neutralization, archiphoneme, underspecification for an explanation of ''archiphoneme'' and ''neutralization'' with an example of a Tuvan archiphoneme involved in vowel harmony.
Examples in selected languages
Vowel harmony appears in many Uralic and almost all Altaic languages.
Uralic languages
Finnish
A Venn diagram of the Finnish vowel harmony system. The front vowels are in blue, neutral in green and back in yellow
| Front | ä | ö | y |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neutral | e | i | |
| Back | a | o | u |
In the Finnish language, there are three classes of vowels -- ''front'', ''back'', and ''neutral'', where each front vowel has a back vowel pairing. Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endings — but not enclitics — have only archiphonemic vowels, which are realized as either A, U, O or Ä, Y, Ö, but never both, 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:
# a back vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with back (or neutral) vowels, e.g. ''pos+ahta+(t)a'' → ''posahtaa''
# a front vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with front (or neutral) vowels, e.g. ''räj+ahta+(t)a'' → ''räjähtää''.
# a neutral vowel acts like a front vowel, but does not control the frontness or backness of the word: if there are back vowels in non-initial syllables, the word acts like it began with back vowels, even if they come from derivational endings, e.g. ''sih+ahta+(ta)'' → ''sihahtaa'' cf. ''sih+ise+(t)a'' → ''sihistä''
For example:
★ ''kaura'' begins with back vowel → ''kauralla''
★ ''kuori'' begins with back vowel → ''kuorella''
★ ''sieni'' begins without back vowels → ''sienellä'' (not
★ ''sienella'')
★ ''käyrä'' begins without back vowels → ''käyrällä''
★ ''tuote'' begins with back vowels → ''tuotteeseensa''
★ ''kerä'' begins with a neutral vowel → ''kerällä''
★ ''kera'' begins with a neutral vowel, but has a noninitial back vowel → ''keralla''
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'' but ''miakka'' ↠''miekka''.
Vowel harmony is a grammaticalized feature of phonotactics, thus it may not work as expected from pure phonology, as evidenced by ''tuotteeseensa'' (not
★ ''tuotteeseensä''). Even if phonologically front vowels precede the suffix ''-nsa'', grammatically it is preceded by a back vowel-controlled word. 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 pronounced ''olumpia''. The position of some loans is unstandardized (e.g. ''chattailla''/''chättäillä'' ) or ill-standardized (e.g. ''polymeeri'', ''autoritäärinen'', 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 counts. For example, ''Wikipediassa'' — the initial syllable ''-pe-'' of the second word would require the final vowel to be ''-ä'', but because it isn't, the process degrammaticalizes, becoming pure phonotactics.
With respect to vowel harmony, compound words can be considered separate words. For example, ''syyskuu'' ("autumn month" i.e. September) has both ''u'' and ''y'', but it consists of two words ''syys'' and ''kuu'', and declines ''syys·kuu·ta'' (not
★ ''syyskuutä''). The same goes for enclitics, e.g. ''taaksepäin'' "backwards" consists of the word ''taakse'' "to back" and ''-päin'' "-wards". If fusion takes place, the vowel is harmonized by some speakers, e.g. ''tälläinen'' pro ''tällainen'' ↠''tämän lainen''.
Hungarian
Vowel types
| open | middle | closed | ||
| 'Back' ("low") | a á | o ó | u ú | |
| 'Front' ("high") | 'unrounded' (neutral) | e é | i à | |
| 'rounded' | ö ő | ü ű | ||
Hungarian, like its distant relative Finnish, has the same system of ''front'', ''back'', and ''intermediate'' (neutral) vowels. The basic rule is that words with front ("high") vowels get front vowel suffixes (''kéz'be''' - in(to) the hand), back ("low") vowel words back suffixes (''kar'ba''' - in(to) the arm).
The only essential difference in classification between Hungarian and Finnish is that Hungarian does not observe the difference between Finnish 'ä' [æ] and 'e' [e] — the Hungarian front vowel 'e' [æ] is the same as the Finnish front vowel 'ä'.
Behaviour of neutral vowels
''Intermediate'' or ''neutral'' vowels are usually counted as ''front'' ones, since they are formed that way, the difference being that neutral vowels can occur along with back vowels in Hungarian word bases (e.g. ''r'é'p'a''' carrot, ''k'o'cs'i''' car). The basic rule is that words with neutral and back vowels usually take back suffixes (e.g. ''répá|ban'' in a carrot, ''kocsi|ban'' in a car).
The suffix rules for words with both kinds of suffixes are the following:
★ The last syllable counts: ''sof'Å‘'r|h'ö'z, nü'a'nsz|sz'a'l, gener'á'l|'á's, októb'e'r|b'e'n''
★
★ A regular exception is ''i/Ã'' and ''é'' (but not usually ''e''): they are transparent for the rule, so only the other sounds will be taken into consideration, e.g. ''p'a'pÃr|h'o'z, k'u'plé|h'o'z, m'a'rék|h'o'z, k'o'nflis|h'o'z''
★ Some words can take either front or back suffixes: ''f'a'rmer|b'a'n'' or ''farm'e'r|b'e'n''
Suffixes in multiple forms
While most grammatical suffixes in Hungarian come in either one form (eg. ''-kor'') or two forms (front and back, eg. ''-ban/-ben''), some suffixes have an additional form for rounded vowels (such as ''ö, ő, ü'' and ''ű''), e.g. ''hoz/-hez/-höz''. An example on basic numerals:
| '-kor'(''at'', for time) | '-ban/-ben'(''in'') | '-hoz/-hez/-höz'(''to'') | |||
| 'Back' | h'a't (6) ny'o'lc (8) h'á'r'o'm (3) | hat'kor' nyolc'kor' három'kor' egy'kor' négy'kor' kilenc'kor' öt'kor' kettő'kor' | hat'ban' nyolc'ban' három'ban' | hat'hoz' nyolc'hoz' három'hoz' | |
| 'Front' | 'unrounded'(neutral) | 'e'gy (1) n'é'gy (4) k'i'l'e'nc (9) | egy'ben' négy'ben' kilenc'ben' öt'ben' kettő'ben' | egy'hez' négy'hez' kilenc'hez' | |
| 'rounded' | 'ö't (5) kett'ő' (2) | öt'höz' kettő'höz' | |||
Altaic languages
Mongolian
| Feminine (front) | e | ö | ü |
|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine (back) | a | o | u |
| Neutral | i |
Mongolian is similar. Front vowels in Mongolian are considered feminine, while back vowels are considered masculine.
Tatar
| Front | ä | e | i | ö | ü | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | a | ı | à | o | u | é |
Tatar has no neutral vowels. The vowel é is found only in loanwords. Other vowels also could be found in loanwords, but they are seen as Back vowels. Tatar language also has a rounding harmony, but it isn't represented in writing. O and ö could be written only in the first syllable, but vowels they mark could be pronounced in place where ı and e are written.
Kazakh
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, which strongly resembles the system in Kyrgyz.
Kyrgyz
Kyrgyz's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony.
Turkish
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |
| High | i | ü | ı | u |
| Low | e | ö | a | o |
Turkish has a 2-dimensional vowel harmony system, where vowels are characterised by two features: [±front] and [±rounded].
Front/back harmony
Turkish has two classes of vowels -- ''front'' and ''back''. 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" but ''kapı'da''' "at the door".
Rounding harmony
In addition, there is a secondary rule that ''i'' and ''ı'' tend to become ''ü'' and ''u'' respectively after rounded vowels, so certain suffixes have additional forms. This gives constructions such as ''Türkiye''dir''' "it is Turkey", ''kapı'dır''' "it is the door", but ''gün'dür''' "it is day", ''palto'dur''' "it is the coat".
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 like ''bu''|''gün'' "today" are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes (such as ''-iyor''); there are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule (such as ''anne'' "mother"). In such words suffixes harmonize with the final vowel; thus ''İstanbul''dur''' "it is İstanbul".
Yokuts
Vowel harmony is present in all Yokutsan languages and dialects. For instance, Yawelmani has 4 vowels (which additionally may be either long or short). These can be grouped as in the table below.
| unrounded | rounded | |
|---|---|---|
| high | i | u |
| non-high | a | É” |
In vowels in suffixes must harmonize with either or its non- counterparts or with or non- counterparts. For example, the vowel in the aorist suffix appears as when it follows a in the root, but when it follows all other vowels it appears as . Similarly, the vowel in the nondirective gerundial suffix appears as when it follows a in the root; otherwise it appears as .
| ''-hun''/''-hin'' | (aorist suffix) | |
| [muʈhun] | 'swear (aorist)' | |
| [ɡij’hin] | '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'' | [ɡij’taw] | 'touch (nondir. ger.)' |
| [muʈtaw] | 'swear (nondir. ger.)' | |
| ''xattaw'' | [xatËaw] | '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) an epenthetic vowel which does not harmonize with stem vowels.
Korean
| Positive/"light"/Yang Vowels | ã… (a) | ã…‘ (ya) | ã…— (o) | ã…› (yo) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ã… (ae) | ã…˜ (wa) | ã…š (oe) | ã…™ (wae) | |
| Negative/"heavy"/Yin Vowels | ã…“ (eo) | ã…• (yeo) | ã…œ (u) | ã… (yu) |
| ã…” (e) | ã… (wo) | ã…Ÿ (wi) | ã…ž (we) | |
| Neutral/Centre Vowels | ã…¡ (eu) | ã…£ (i) | ã…¢ (ui) | |
There are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive, negative, and neutral. These categories loosely follow the front (positive) and mid (negative) vowels. Traditionally, Korean had strong vowel harmony; however, this rule is no longer observed strictly in modern Korean. In modern Korean, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia, adjectives, adverbs, conjugation, and interjections. The vowel ㅡ(eu) is considered a partially neutral and a partially negative vowel. There are other traces of vowel harmony in modern Korean: many native Korean words tend to follow vowel harmony such as 사람 (saram), which means person, and 부엌 (Bueok), which means kitchen.
Proponents of Korean as an Altaic language use the existence of vowel harmony in Korean to support their argument.
Japanese
Modern Japanese lacks vowel harmony, but some consider it evident that such a process must have existed at one time. Linguists point to the word "funabashi" (船橋, ship's bridge), which is a compound of "fune" (船, ship) and "hashi" (橋, bridge). Linguists theorize that the transformation of "e" to "a" is due to a vestigial system of vowel harmony (the voicing of "h" as "b" is due to rendaku). Some linguists present this phenomenon as evidence that Japanese is an Altaic language.
Other languages
Vowel harmony occurs in many other languages, such as
★ Akan languages,
★ several Bantu languages such as Standard Lingala,
★ dialects of Catalan language
★ Coeur d’Alene,
★ Coosan languages,
★ Dusun languages,
★ Lingala language,
★ Maiduan languages,
★ Manchu,
★ Nez Percé,
★ Nilotic languages,
★ Takelma,
★ Telugu,
★ Sumerian,
★ Utian languages,
★ Warlpiri.
Other types of harmony
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 as consonant harmony). Rarer types of harmony are those that involve tone or both vowels and consonants (e.g. ''postvelar harmony'').
Vowel-consonant harmony
Some languages have harmony processes that involve an interaction between vowels and consonants. For example, Chilcotin has a phonological process known as ''vowel flattening'' (i.e. post-velar harmony) where vowels must harmonize with uvular and pharyngealized consonants.
Chilcotin has two classes of vowels:
★ "flat" vowels
★ non-"flat" vowels
Additionally, Chilcotin has a class of pharyngealized "flat" consonants . Whenever a consonant of this class occurs in a word, all preceding vowels must be flat vowels.
| [jətʰeɬʦˤʰosˤ] | 'he's holding it (fabric)' | ||
| [ʔapələsˤ] | 'apples' | ||
| [natʰák’ə̃sˤ] | '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' | ||
| [tetʰǽsk’ɛn] | 'I'll burn it' | ||
| [tʰɛtɬʊç] | 'he laughs' |
Other languages of this region of North America (the Plateau culture area), such as St'át'imcets, have similar vowel-consonant harmonic processes.
Languages with vowel harmony
★ Altaic languages
★ Hungarian language
★ Uralic languages
★ Turkic languages
★ Turkish language
★ Korean language
See also
★ Consonant harmony
★ Metaphony
★ Germanic umlaut
★ I-mutation
External links
★ A Little Close Harmony: Sounds of a language ‘echoing’ each other
Bibliography
★ Jacobson, Leon Carl. (1978). ''DhoLuo vowel harmony: A phonetic investigation''. Los Angeles: University of California.
★ Krämer, Martin. (2003). ''Vowel harmony and correspondence theory''. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
★ Li, Bing. (1996). ''Tungusic vowel harmony: Description and analysis''. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
★ Shahin, Kimary N. (2002). ''Postvelar harmony''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub.
★ Smith, Norval; & van der Hulst, Harry (Eds.). (1988). ''Features, segmental structure and harmony processes'' (Pts. 1 & 2). Dordrecht: Foris. ISBN 90-6765-399-3 (pt. 1), ISBN 90-6765-430-2 (pt. 2 ) .
★ Vago, Robert M. (Ed.). (1980). ''Issues in vowel harmony: Proceedings of the CUNY Linguistic Conference on Vowel Harmony, 14th May 1977''. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
★ Vago, Robert M. (1994). Vowel harmony. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), ''The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics'' (pp. 4954-4958). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
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