Abstract
Theories of vowel harmony have wrestled with the formal challenges of transparency, notably the increased expressivity resulting from non-local dependencies. However, experimental work has demonstrated on a number of occasions that ‘transparent’ vowels actually undergo harmony (e.g., Gick, Pulleyblank, Campbell, & Mutaka, 2006), re-establishing the role of locality in the analysis of harmony. Existing work on backness harmony in Uyghur argues that /i/ is transparent to harmony, with some proposing that this falls out from the absence of contrastive /ɯ/ in the language (e.g., Vaux, 2000). This paper examines the distribution of surface [i] and [ɯ] within roots and suffixes to assess their phonological status, as well as their participation in harmony. Results support the case that there are no long-distance dependencies in Uyghur, suggesting that harmony is truly local in the language. Results for root-internal [i] and [ɯ] are less clear; evidence from most speakers supports an allophonic relationship, while some evidence for other speakers suggests the possibility of contrastive /i/ and /ɯ/.
Highlights
One of the central restrictions imposed by theories of vowel harmony is locality (Goldsmith, 1976; Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1994; Gafos, 1999; Nevins, 2010)
This paper examines backness harmony in Uyghur to determine what role contrast plays in the application of harmony
Root-internal high unrounded vowels The first question to address is whether members of each near-minimal pair exhibit different patterns of suffix allomorph selection
Summary
One of the central restrictions imposed by theories of vowel harmony is locality (Goldsmith, 1976; Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1994; Gafos, 1999; Nevins, 2010). While the representational structures may differ across various theories, each theory demands that locality constrain harmonic interactions. When faced with non-local dependencies in harmony ( called transparency), researchers have developed elaborate representational structures in order to satisfy a formal definition of locality (e.g., Hayes & Wilson, 2008; Nevins, 2010; Odden, 1994; van der Hulst & van der Weijer, 1995). Phonetic and phonological research on languages with reported transparency has found that in many cases ‘transparent’ segments alternate for harmony (Benus & Gafos, 2007; Ritchart & Rose, 2017). In Hungarian, as the number of transparent vowels increases, these vowels begin to block harmony (Hayes & Londe, 2006; Ringen & Kontra, 1989)
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