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Ghost · Šalea Joined: 31 Mar 2003 Location: Great Britannia

I still don't understand it people. Could someone explain with examples, but not getting too technical...

Thanks,
Ghost Confused

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bi's sock puppet · Šalea Joined: 27 Aug 2003

Notice how, for each word in this passage, the word either contains only vowels from the group { a, i, o, u }, or only vowels from the group { e, i, ?, ? }, never from both groups:

erte(#) urida(*) kabalik(*) balgasun-dur(*) biraman-u(*) qamug(*) uqagan-u(*) j?il-d?r(#) mergen(#) bolugsan(*) sain(*) t?r?l-t?(#) kemek?(#) nigen(#) biraman(*) b?l?ge(#). ...

(*) first group { a, i, o, u }
(#) second group { e, i, ?, ? }

Nuntar · Šalea Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Location: [16.50.72.0]

Interesting. Is there any pattern in the way the vowels are split into the groups?

Soap · Šalea Joined: 16 Feb 2003 Location: Nonesuch River

Usually it's front vs back, round vs unround, or high vs low. But average people are not linguists, and they dont often follow the rules. For example, notice that /i/ is in both groups.

Neek · Šalea Joined: 30 Sep 2002 Location: im itësin

In bicoherent's example, the defining form is frontness/backness (though what is considered front and what is considered back can sometimes be something else, from what I understand). However, other forms include rounding and height harmony.

For round harmony, imagine a language has six vowels: a rounded series /y & u/ and an unrounded series /i a M/. Now, the rule is any morpheme will conform to the roundness of the stem: that is /ni/ when attached to /k&n/ becomes /k&p.ny/, or /ku/ to /pan/ becomes /pan.kM/.

Height harmony works in the same way: vowels will tend to conform to the height of the root vowel (or perhaps, to some other degree. In a language that is just root + 1 suffix, the root may harmonize with the suffix!). So if you had two phonemoic heights, /i u/ and /a Q/ then /kap/ + /ni/ would yield /kapna/, etc. (I'm not sure if three-height would work the same...)
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Nuntar · Šalea Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Location: [16.50.72.0]

Ran · Šalea Joined: 13 Sep 2002 Location: Diqiu Gongheguo

gach · Tšur Joined: 17 Feb 2003 Location: Helsinki, Finland

Usually vowels that are found from both series wary a bit. Eg. Finnish /i/ is a neutral vowel that can be in both back and fron words. Usually its sound is [i] but close to back vowels it gets more backish, something like [I] or even [1]. Same kind of alternation happens with the other neutral vowel /e/. The only thing that makes these allophones and not phonem pairs, like a-?, o-? and u-y, is that they are not distinktive.

Vowel harmony must not affect all the vowel phonemes. It can as well affect only to one phoneme. An example are the eastern dialects of North S?mi (though it's only allophonlic variation). In the standard language there is no vowel harmony and all of the vowels a (back a), ? (front a), e, i, o, u can occure together. But in the eastern dialects the ? varies quite much. Itself and near e and i it's [{] but with a, o and u it's [A] or even [Q]. Althoung this is only allophonic it has the same nature as the phonetic vowel harmony.
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bricka · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 6:26 am Post subject:

Another kind of vowel harmony is found in Igbo, IIRC; there are two groups called "tense" and "lax", each of four vowels. I think the tense set contains /i u e a/ and the lax set /I U E o/. A word can only contain vowels from one set, not both.

vecfaranti · Šalea Joined: 16 Sep 2003

bi's sock puppet · Šalea Joined: 27 Aug 2003

vegfarandi: It's Mongolian, actually.

vecfaranti · Šalea Joined: 16 Sep 2003

Nuntar · Šalea Joined: 25 Oct 2003 Location: [16.50.72.0]

doctrellor · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 10:27 am Post subject:

good thread, I've always wondered how vowel harmony works
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pharazon · Šalea Joined: 04 Sep 2003 Location: Seattle

Glenn · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 1:13 pm Post subject:

doctrellor · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 2:47 pm Post subject:

In natlangs...

do they use 2 style harmony:.. High v Low or Front v Back

or

4 Part: High, Low, Front, Back
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daan · Endi Joined: 13 Sep 2002

Hmm. I only know about Hungarian and Finnish harmony, which is essentially front-back.

For my conlang, of which the grammar can be found here, I use a system in which there exists a distinction between back, middle and front, with one vowel having three versions, one having a back and a middle/front version and one with a back/middle and front version. The rest remains always the same. Would such a system be plausible?

doctrellor · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 4:04 pm Post subject:

Glenn · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 6:39 pm Post subject:

Eddy · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 6:44 pm Post subject:

That certainly puts some strict limits on the possible affixes.
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Soap · Šalea Joined: 16 Feb 2003 Location: Nonesuch River

Most languages with complex phonologies hardly use any of their possible sound combinations for affixes, prepositions, etc. anyway ... for example there is no final -c in Latin declensions, as far as I know. or -b, -f, etc.

pharazon · Šalea Joined: 04 Sep 2003 Location: Seattle

Glenn · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2003 7:15 pm Post subject:

bi's sock puppet · Šalea Joined: 27 Aug 2003

Besides the aforementioned forms of vowel harmony, there are also some which are harder to specify, such as the advanced/non-advanced tongue root harmony of written Manchu.