Vowel harmony, centralization, and peripherality: the case of Pasiego

Abstract

Although many different cases of vowel harmony can be found in the world's languages, there is a general consensus that they can all be classified into three basic types: frontness or palatal harmony, roundness or labial harmony, and ATR or height harmony. The Northwestern Spanish dialect Pasiego, however, evinces a process of vowel harmony that clearly does not fit into any of these classes. Rather, there is every indication that it involves a process of centralization that, it will be argued, can best be captured in terms of vowel peripherality.