*K in conflation theory: when a language has transguttural harmony (original) (raw)
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Low vowels and transparency in Kinande vowel harmony
Phonology, 2006
This paper addresses theoretical issues confronting cross-height harmony systems through an experimental study of Kinande, a Bantu language of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using a combination of acoustic analysis and lingual ultrasound imaging, we evaluate previous proposals concerning the phonetic correlates of the harmonic vowel feature and the transparency of low vowels. Results indicate that (i) although a multivalued scalar acoustic feature in F1/F2 space is not adequate to distinguish all vowel categories in Kinande, the cross-height feature does correlate acoustically with F1, (ii) the cross-height feature of Kinande involves systematic tongue-root articulations and (iii) low vowels in Kinande are not neutral to harmony in the way reported in earlier work, but exhibit significant and systematic tongue-root advancement and retraction according to the dictates of harmony.
Opacity is a matter of representation: Shimakonde vowel harmony and vowel reduction
ZAS Papers in Linguistics
As work like McCarthy (2002: 128) notes, pre-Optimality Theory (OT) phonology was primarily concerned with representations and theories of subsegmental structure. In contrast, the role of representations and choice of structural models has received little attention in OT. Some central representational issues of the pre-OT era have, in fact, become moot in OT (McCarthy 2002: 128). Further, as work like Baković (2007) notes, even for assimilatory processes where representation played a central role in the pre-OT era, constraint interaction now carries the main explanatory burden. Indeed, relatively few studies in OT (e.g., Rose 2000; Hargus & Beavert 2006; Huffmann 2005, 2007; Morén 2006) have argued for the importance of phonological representations. This paper intends to contribute to this work by reanalyzing a set of processes related to vowel harmony in Shimakonde, a Bantu language spoken in Mozambique and Tanzania. These processes are of particular interest, as Liphola’s (2001) s...
A correspondence approach to vowel harmony and disharmony
1998
In the paper, it will be argued that both harmony and dissimilatory OCP effects on vowels are best analyzed as correspondence relations between output segments within certain domains, rather than as featural alignment as proposed in the literature for analyses of harmony. The presented approach allows for a unitary treatment of harmony and disharmony effects and predicts that disharmony is to be found more rarely. Furthermore, it will be shown that the prosodic domains mora and syllable play a crucial role for harmony. Under this assumption, the fact that consonants can block vowel harmony will be explained straightforwardly. Following Inkelas' (1994) theory of underspecification, the approach allows a division of harmony systems into structure changing (i.e., all overriding) and structure filling (i.e., morpheme-specific) harmony types. My argumentation is based mainly on data from Ainu, Turkish, and Yucatec Maya.
Linguistics in The Netherlands, 2003
Segmental modification types, such as labialization, aspiration and prenasalization, usually appear on natural classes in consonantal inventories. There appear to be two typical situations in which segmental modifications pattern, which can be referred to as 'redundant' and 'contrastive': in redundant systems the segmental modification is superimposed on another, primary distinction, and therefore acts like an additional way of making a segmental contrast, while in contrastive systems there is no distinction between two (sets of) segments other than the segmental modification. In this paper we investigate the cross-linguistic occurrence of both types of systems, and offer a formalization couched in Optimality Theory, involving faithfulness constraints relativized for natural class.
Morpheme Realization and Direction of Vowel Harmony.
2005
In this paper I will argue that regressive harmony in Assamese verbs and other derived environments is a result of morpheme realization. Drawing evidence from/i/deletion and/a/adaptation, I show that these cases of vowel harmony demonstrate the operation of a highly ranked constraint called 'Realize Head Morpheme'. This reformulated Realize Morpheme constraint states that the phonological features of the morpheme head in the input form must be expressed in the output form.