Vowel Harmony Research Articles

Investigating the universality of consonant and vowel co-occurrence restrictions

Certain phonotactic constraints on the co-occurrence of segments appear to be much more common across the world’s languages than others. In many languages, similar consonant co-occurrence is restricted through Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) effects, while there are some exceptions for identical consonants. In vowels, the opposite pattern appears to hold: many languages have vowel harmony processes, where vowels within a domain are required to share some feature. Languages that encourage similar consonant co-occurrence or restrict similar vowel co-occurrence appear to be exceedingly uncommon. However, evidence of this pattern so far only comes from studies of individual languages or families, or of only consonants or vowels. We investigate patterns of co-occurrence in vowels and consonants in 107 Northern Eurasian languages across 21 families using Bayesian negative binomial regression to explicitly model the effects of aggregate similarity and segment identity on co-occurrence counts (the results of which can be interpreted similarly to observed/expected ratios). We find that the effect of similarity is remarkably consistent across languages: Similar consonant co-occurrence is disfavored, while aggregate similarity has no effect on vowel co-occurrence. Identical segment co-occurrence effects are much more variable across languages, with a tendency towards disfavoring identical consonants, and favoring identical vowels. We also find larger effects in consonants than in vowels, suggesting that consonant co-occurrence is more strongly constrained than vowel co-occurrence. We also find that there is no evidence for or against any correlations between vowel and consonant co-occurrence, suggesting that more data is needed to evaluate this possibility.

Linguistics variation: A case study of Oka - Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria

The analysis reveals distinct phonological features, such as unique vowel harmony patterns and consonant clusters, that differentiate Ọ̀kà dialects from each other. Syntactic analysis uncovers differences in sentence structure, particularly in verb placement and the use of tense and aspect markers. Lexical comparisons highlight numerous unique terms and expressions in Ọ̀kà, reflecting cultural and environmental influences. This research contributes to the documentation and preservation of the Ọ̀kà dialect, providing insights into the dynamic nature of language and its role in cultural identity. The findings underscore the importance of linguistic diversity and support efforts to promote and sustain minority dialects within larger linguistic communities. It is based on an analysis of phonological and morphophonological features as vowel harmonies and consonant clusters found specifically in both Ọ̀kà dialects and standard Yorùba. Lexical comparisons reveal many hapaxes in Ọ̀kà that illustrate cultural and environmental associations. The study also unpacks sociolinguistic dimensions that shape these variations. This research contributes to the documentation and preservation of the Ọ̀kà dialect, providing insights into the dynamic nature of language and its role in cultural identity. The findings underscore the importance of linguistic diversity and support efforts to promote and sustain minority dialects within larger linguistic communities.

Korean vowel harmony has weak phonotactic support and has limited productivity

Abstract Chong (2017) claims that a derived environment process is productive to the extent that it is supported by phonotactics. The present study tests this claim by comparing variable patterns observed in Korean vowel harmony of suffix alternation with vowel co-occurrence restrictions in the lexicon. A corpus study replicated findings of previous studies that the harmony in suffix alternation is losing productivity, conditioned by the quality of the stem vowel, the number of intervening consonants between the vowels and the stem class. Phonotactic generalisations in vowel sequences matched such tendencies in the alternation in that harmony was feeble in phonotactics and that some of the factors that modulate the harmony in alternation were found to affect the harmony in phonotactics as well. The findings generally support Chong’s claim that lack of phonotactic support for an alternation makes it harder to learn.

The distinctive role of vowel harmony in visual word recognition: The case of Turkish.

Vowel harmony is a phenomenon in which the vowels in a word share some features (e.g., frontness vs. backness). It occurs in several families of languages (e.g., Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages) and serves as an effective segmenting cue in continuous speech and when reading compound words. The present study examined whether vowel harmony also plays a role in visual word recognition. We chose Turkish, a language with four front and four back vowels in which approximately 75% of words are harmonious. If vowel harmony contributes to the formation of coherent phonological codes during lexical access, harmonious words will reach a stable orthographic-phonological state more rapidly than disharmonious words. To test this hypothesis, in Experiment 1, we selected two types of monomorphemic Turkish words: harmonious (containing only front vowels or back vowels) and disharmonious (containing front and back vowels)-a parallel manipulation was applied to the pseudowords. Results showed faster lexical decisions for harmonious than disharmonious words, whereas vowel harmony did not affect pseudowords. In Experiment 2, where all words were harmonious, we found a small but reliable advantage for disharmonious over harmonious pseudowords. These findings suggest that vowel harmony helps the formation of stable phonological codes in Turkish words, but it does not play a key role in pseudoword rejection.

The emergence of vowel harmony in Armenian dialects

Abstract We find vowel harmony systems in many non-standard varieties of modern Armenian. It has been speculated that these may have acquired vowel harmony due to contact with Turkic varieties (Scala 2018). On the basis of an exploration of the synchrony and typology of Armenian vowel harmony, consideration of historical changes that could have caused harmony to develop, and evaluation of new data bearing on the origins of backness and rounding harmony in Oghuz, we propose that the vowel harmony systems of the modern Armenian dialects show evidence of having been influenced by Turkish, but the numerous differences between Armenian and Turkish vowel harmony point against a straightforward copying of the Turkish phonological system. We theorize that vowel harmony in Armenian arose due to a combination of language-internal and ‑external factors: vowel shifts in some Armenian dialects, alongside universal analytic and channel biases, provided the necessary preconditions for the development of vowel harmony by the 11th century AD, prior to the arrival of Turkic speakers in the Armenian homeland. Extensive contact with Turkic vowel systems may then have encouraged the phonologization of this assimilation process, but in strikingly different ways than are found in Turkic languages.

Vowel harmony preferences in infants growing up in multilingual Ghana (Africa).

Infants' preference for vowel harmony (VH, a phonotactic constraint that requires vowels in a word to be featurally similar) is thought to be language-specific: Monolingual infants learning VH languages show a listening preference for VH patterns by 6 months of age, while those learning non-VH languages do not (Gonzalez-Gomez et al., 2019; Van Kampen et al., 2008). We investigated sensitivity to advanced tongue root (ATR) harmony in Akan (Kwa, Niger-Congo) in 40 six-month-old multilingual infants (21 girls) in Ghana, West Africa (an understudied population), all learning Akan, Ghanaian English, and most of them several other understudied African languages (e.g., Ga, Ewe). We hypothesized that infants learning both ATR harmony and nonharmony languages would demonstrate sensitivity to ATR harmony. Using the central fixation procedure, infants were presented with disyllabic nonwords that were either harmonic (e.g., puti) or nonharmonic (e.g., petɔ) based on their ATR features. Infants demonstrated sensitivity to ATR harmony with a familiarity preference, listening longer to harmonic syllable sequences than nonharmonic ones. The relative amount of exposure to (an) ATR harmony language(s) did not modulate the preference. These results shed light on our understanding of early multilingualism: they suggest that early sensitivity to VH in multilinguals may be similar to monolingual infants learning other types of VH, irrespective of simultaneous experience with non-VH languages. We conclude with reflections on studying infant language acquisition in multilingual Africa. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The process of vowel harmony in Kurdish language in the framework of Autosegmental phonology

This study discusses the vowels harmony in Kurdish language. Vowel harmony like assimilation process is a very common process in most languages of the world. This process is studied by most phonological theories, such as generative phonology, autosegmental phonology as well as optimality theory. We examine this process from the perspective of autosegmental phonology in this paper. Therefore, we can say that the aim of this study is to investigate the process of vowel harmony in Kurdish language from the perspective of autosegmental phonology. The methodology of this study is to analyze the content of the articles and collect the data with appropriate samples. Autosegmental theory is one of the theories in the field of phonology and was first emerged by Goldsmith as an independent field of generative phonology. In 1976, along with the study of rhyme languages, he introduced autosegmental phonology and then it was published in tonal languages. This theory is actually a field or part of production phonology.

Supplemental Material for Vowel Harmony Preferences in Infants Growing up in Multilingual Ghana (Africa)

Supplemental Material for Vowel Harmony Preferences in Infants Growing up in Multilingual Ghana (Africa)

Exploring acoustic overlaps in Djibouti Somali

Abstract Somali is well known to exhibit vowel harmony (Armstrong 1934), but linguists know remarkably little about how the system is implemented. Most presume that harmonic oppositions involve the tongue root and analyze the system relative to the feature [ATR], though the phonetic implementation of the contrast is complicated by a “quirky” (Krämer 2008) vocalic system. Reports also indicate that harmonic alternations vary between speakers and dialects, including in the bounds of the harmonic domain, but again, little systematic comparison has been pursued. To better understand the bearing that vowel quality and vocalic contrasts have on Somali vowel harmony, this paper reports the results of a study aimed at establishing details of the Djibouti Somali vocalic system. Our findings reveal that while a harmony system seems intact for all speakers studied, three consistent trends of acoustic (i.e., vowel space) overlap emerge from the data which may portend eventual mergers. These trends align in notable ways, but not entirely, with reports of harmonic decay elsewhere in the literature. They suggest that loss of harmonic distinctions in high vowels may be underway, but in different ways, in front vs. back vowels and that harmonic contrasts in long vowels are particularly susceptible to weakening. Our interpretation of these results, viewed alongside the typological literature on ATR harmony systems, is that Somali vowel harmony may be threatened or in decline as a result of these acoustic overlaps.

A popular text in eastern Turki: Isnad-i Nadi Ali

The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to the studies on Eastern Turki, as it is called in Western literature, which grew upon Chagatay under the improving influences of Kashgar and Yarkend dialects in the east at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. This written language (Eastern Turki) has been used particularly in manuscripts created by common people. Thus, a manuscript with the title Isnad-i Nadi Ali in the genre of attribution of supplications that has not been discussed in any other papers has been analyzed descriptively in this article. The mentioned manuscript, which is the essential material of this article, is between folios 66a and 71b of the miscellaneous manuscript held in the Bodleian Library under the number MS. Ind. Inst. Pers. This article consists of an introduction and five sections. The introduction provides general information about Eastern Turki and the popular texts in this literary language. The depiction of the manuscript, phonetic (vowel harmonies and phonetic changes), and morphologic (derivational and inflectional suffixes and other morphemes) aspects have been scrutinized in the initial three sections. The fourth section comprises the transcription of the manuscript. This paper's fifth section contains the grammatical index of the vocabulary of the text.

A Non-Linear Analysis of Foreign English Words in Standard Arabic

This study aimed to analyze the foreign English loanwords in Standard Arabic within the framework of a non-linear phonology (autosegmental phonology). The analysis of the data focused on selected phonological processes such as: consonantal substitutions including voicing, devoicing, velarization, fortition. Moreover, it covers the phonological process of assimilation, comprising palatalization, labialization, nasalization, and vowel harmony. Furthermore, vowel lengthening and shortening phonological processes were identified in the collected data. The sample of the study is collected from six sources: Said (1976), Zughoul and Hussein (1993), Al-Saqqa (2001), Mukkaram (2006), Salem (2015), and Abu Guba (2016). Finally, the study showed that autosegmental theory provides an adequate analysis in explaining certain phonological processes when dealing with English loanwords.

A Non-linear Analysis of Segmental Harmony in Algerian Wadi Souf Dialect

The present study discusses some phonological processes of segmental harmony in Algerian Wadi Souf dialect. The data were collected from natural recorded speech of fifty native speakers of this dialect. Moreover, one of the researchers added some examples since she is a native speaker of this dialect. This research adopts the non-linear phonological theory. The findings showed that this theory can provide an adequate analysis for segmental harmony. It is also found that non-adjacent sibilants can spread the feature of anteriority bi-directionally. The anterior sibilants /z/ and /s/ spread the feature [+anterior] to the non-anterior sibilant /ʒ/, and it is realized as [z]. Moreover, raising and fronting vowel harmony occurs in both CaCi:C adjectives that are realized as CiCi:C and the imperfect prefix of jaCCiC and jaCCi verbs that are realized as jiCCiC and jiCCi. Raising and rounding vowel harmony occurs in the imperfect prefix of jaCCuC tri-consonantal verbs that are realized as juCCuC.

Definitions, patterns and history of the study of vowel harmony in the Kazakh language

Relevance. Since phonological changes at the junction of morphemes, in particular in the consonantism system, have not been sufficiently studied. The formation of an idea of synharmonic processes is relevant in modern linguistic science. Purpose. The research purpose was to study the sound parameters, phonological features and synharmonism on the example of the Kazakh, Turkish and English languages. Methodology. The following methods were used to achieve the research purpose: comparative, structural, phonetic, analytical and synthetic. Results. This article presents definitions, patterns and four stages in the history of the study of vowel harmony in the Kazakh language. To determine the level of labial harmony of Kazakh vowels, a table of comparison with other Turkic languages was presented. In this paper, the main phonological changes at the junction of the root and affixal morphemes and their expression in the sound plane were noted, the influence of phonetics on other language levels was assessed. The idea of four main timbres in the Kazakh language has been formed: soft, hard, rounded and unrounded, the features of vocal and consonant synharmonism. Methods for improving the identification of sound parameters and the formation of phonetic speech patterns using machine technologies are considered. Conclusions. The study concludes that while Kazakh and Turkish share similarities in vowel harmony patterns, they differ in application, and English exhibits a largely disharmonious sound structure with some exceptions in borrowed words. Keywords: vowels and consonants; phoneme; sound system; affix; morphemic junction

백석의 작품을 통해 본 정주 지역어의 음운현상에 대한 고찰

The purpose of this study is to examine the phonological phenomena shown in Baek Seok's literary works. Baek Seok(1912~1996) who was born in Ikseong-dong, Galsan-myeon, Jeongju-gun of Pyeonganbuk-do in 1912, graduated from Osan Primary School and Osan High School. After going through the writing practice period, he made his debut as a writer by winning the prize in the Chosun Ilbo New-Year Literary Contest in 1930. After graduating from the Dept. of English in Cheongsan School of Tokyo, he started working as a proofreading reporter of Chosun Ilbo from the following year(1935). For about three years from 1936, he worked as a teacher of Yeongsaeng High School of Hamheung. After the liberation, he moved from his hometown Jeongju to Yanggang-do near Amnok River. Before he passed away in 1996, he cultivated literary people there. Baek Seok published his poetical works Deer in 1936. By following Irish novelist James Augustine Aloysius Joyce who aimed to protect his mother tongue under the British colonization, he utilized proper nouns and sensory words using Pyeongan-do dialect. Except for several native words, the initial law and palatalization were not mostly applied. While the front-vowelization was rarely applied, the high-vowelization was realized into ‘ㅗ > ㅜ’ and ‘ㅓ> ㅡ’, and the umlaut was realized into ‘ㅏ>ㅐ’ and ‘ㅓ>ㅔ’. In most cases, the vowel harmony was not followed while there was the vowel addition for the formation of rules. Such phonological phenomena not only show the characteristics of Jeongju dialect of Pyeonganbuk-do, but also show the renovated form according to the progressive assimilation of each dialect area.

A Learning-Based Account of Phonological Tiers

Abstract Morphophonological alternations often involve dependencies between adjacent segments. Despite the apparent distance between relevant segments in the alternations that arise in consonant and vowel harmony, these dependencies can usually be viewed as adjacent on a tier representation. However, the tier needed to render dependencies adjacent varies crosslinguistically, and the abstract nature of tier representations in comparison to flat, string-like representations has led phonologists to seek justification for their use in phonological theory. In this paper, I propose a learning-based account of tier-like representations. I argue that humans show a proclivity for tracking dependencies between adjacent items, and propose a simple learning algorithm that incorporates this proclivity by tracking only adjacent dependencies. The model changes representations in response to being unable to predict the surface form of alternating segments—a decision governed by the Tolerance Principle, which allows for learning despite the sparsity and exceptions inevitable in naturalistic data. Tier-like representations naturally emerge from this learning procedure, and, when trained on small amounts of natural language data, the model achieves high accuracy generalizing to held-out test words, while flexibly handling cross-linguistic complexities like neutral segments and blockers. The model also makes precise predictions about human generalization behavior, and these are consistently borne out in artificial language experiments.

The "Starting-Small" Effect in Phonology: Evidence From Biased Learning of Opaque and Transparent Vowel Harmony.

The starting-small effect is a cognitive advantage in language acquisition when learners begin by generalizing on regularities from structurally simple and shorter tokens in a skewed input distribution. Our study explored this effect as a potential explanation for the biased learning of opaque and transparent vowel harmony. In opaque vowel harmony, feature agreement occurs strictly between adjacent vowels, and an intervening "neutral vowel" blocks long-distance vowel harmony. Thus, opaque vowel harmony could be acquired even if learners start with structurally simpler and more frequent disyllabic tokens. Alternatively, transparent vowel harmony can only be observed in longer tokens demonstrating long-distance agreement by skipping a neutral vowel. Opaque vowel harmony is predicted to be learned more efficiently due to its compatibility with local dependency acquired via starting-small learning. In two artificial grammar learning experiments, learners were exposed to both vowel harmony patterns embedded in an equal number of disyllabic and trisyllabic tokens or a skewed distribution with twice as many disyllabic tokens. In Exp I, learners' test performance suggests the consistently biased learning of local and opaque vowel harmony with starting-small learning. Furthermore, in Exp II, the acquired vowel harmony patterns varied significantly by working memory capacity with a balanced but not skewed input distribution, presumably because of the ease of cognitive demand with starting-small learning.

Patterning of laxing spreading in Quebec French

Quebec French laxing is a rather well-known phonological process, starting from the tense vowels [i], [y], and [u] being rendered lax in some closed syllables. This process can also trigger laxing of high vowels in preceding syllables as well, though the nature of this process remains a source of debate, whether it is a spreading process or vowel harmony. In addition to the nature of the process itself, the patterning that occurs for the laxing spreading is one that has been long discussed, particularly when it comes to words with more than two syllables. Poliquin (2006) lists three different possible patterns that the laxing may take. The goal of this thesis was to not only confirm the presence of the spreading patterns found in Poliquin(2006), but also to determine to what degree they occur within native speakers of Quebec French. While the results seem to confirm the presence of laxing spreading, the frequency at which they occur seems to be rather low and vary not only from speaker to speaker, but also within the same speaker.

Influence of Morphophonological Processes on the Verbal Structure of the Mambwe Language

Mambwe language is said to be from the ancestor language, the Fipa in Southern Tanzania. Guthrie (1948) classifies the Mambwe language as M15. This article aims to contribute to describing the verbal structure of Mambwe focusing on the influence of morphophonological processes. Using insights from comparative Bantu morphophonology, descriptive linguistics, elicitation, and direct observation data, the article outlines the prominent morphophonological processes which have an influence on the verbal structure of the language, which include; vowel lengthening, gliding, glide harmony, vowel hiatus, vowel and consonant harmony, vowel deletion, vowel maintenance, assimilation, internal change or zero modification and coalescence. The paper shows that the verbal structure in the prefix, subject, and object marker, and the root is influenced by either the palatal glide [y] or the bilabial glide [w] in the plural, glide maintenance, or glide interchange to harmonise the verbs. It is envisaged such a descriptive analysis will make it easier for curriculum developers to understand the verbal structure of the language and enable them to develop grammar as well as curriculum material.

Weak determinism and the computational consequences of interaction

Recent work has claimed that (non-tonal) phonological patterns are subregular (Heinz 2011a,b, 2018; Heinz and Idsardi 2013), occupying a delimited proper subregion of the regular functions—the weakly deterministic (WD) functions (Heinz and Lai 2013; Jardine 2016). Whether or not it is correct (McCollum et al. 2020a), this claim can only be properly assessed given a complete and accurate definition of WD functions. We propose such a definition in this article, patching unintended holes in Heinz and Lai’s (2013) original definition that we argue have led to the incorrect classification of some phonological patterns as WD. We start from the observation that WD patterns share a property that we call unbounded semiambience, modeled after the analogous observation by Jardine (2016) about non-deterministic (ND) patterns and their unbounded circumambience. Both ND and WD functions can be broken down into compositions of deterministic (subsequential) functions (Elgot and Mezei 1965; Heinz and Lai 2013) that read an input string from opposite directions; we show that WD functions are those for which these deterministic composands do not interact in a way that is familiar from the theoretical phonology literature. To underscore how this concept of interaction neatly separates the WD class of functions from the strictly more expressive ND class, we provide analyses of the vowel harmony patterns of two Eastern Nilotic languages, Maasai and Turkana, using bimachines, an automaton type that represents unbounded bidirectional dependencies explicitly. These analyses make clear that there is interaction between deterministic composands when (and only when) the output of a given input element of a string is simultaneously dependent on information from both the left and the right: ND functions are those that involve interaction, while WD functions are those that do not.

Beyond Segment Inventories: Phonological Complexity Measures and Suprasegmental Variables in Contact Situations

Abstract This article has three goals. First, it provides a broad cross-linguistic survey of phonological change in contact situations focusing on the suprasegmental domain. The term suprasegmental refers here to syllable structure, stress patterns, tonal patterns, and vowel and nasal harmony systems. Secondly, it assesses phonological change to suprasegmental variables whereby external influence causes an increase in complexity in the recipient language’s structure. Thirdly, using insights from the phonological typology literature, it provides a preliminary framework to evaluate suprasegmental phenomena, which can then serve as an additional tool to disentangle inheritance from contact-induced change. Data from 45 languages suggest that the suprasegmental domain provides fertile ground for inspecting contact-influenced increases in linguistic complexity. Overall, we argue that the data reviewed here highlight the relevance of phonological structure as a variable in studies of language contact, which have been mostly preoccupied with morphosyntactic variables.