Oroch vowel harmony revisited

2020

Abstract. This paper revisits Oroch vowel harmony previously analyzed in

2012

This dissertation investigates the synchrony and diachrony of the vocalism of a variety of Northeast Asian languages, especially Korean, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, which have traditionally been described as having developed from a palatal system. The dissertation rewrites the vocalic history by demonstrating that the original vowel harmony in these languages was in fact based on an RTR, rather than a palatal, contrast, and provides a formal account for the development of individual vowel systems within the framework of Contrastive Hierarchy (Dresher, 2009). Following the general and theoretical background in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 begins to explore how the vowel contrasts in the modern Mongolic languages are hierarchically structured. It proceeds to propose an RTR analysis for Old Mongolian (contra Poppe, 1955) based on a combination of arguments from the comparative method, the typology of vowel shifts, and the phonetics of vowel features. Consequently, the palatal system in Kalmyk/Oirat is understood not as a retention but an innovation as a result of an RTR-to-palatal shift, contra Svantesson’s (1985) palatal-to-RTR shift hypothesis. Chapter 3 presents an innovative view that Middle Korean had an RTR contrast-based vowel system and that various issues in Korean historical phonology receive better treatment under the contrastive hierarchy approach. Chapter 3 also argues that Ki-Moon Lee’s (1964, 1972) Korean vowel shift hypothesis is untenable, based on the RTR analysis of Old Mongolian presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 4 shows that an RTR-based contrastive hierarchy analysis also holds for the lesser-studied Tungusic languages including Proto-Tungusic. Turning to theoretical issues, Chapter 5 investigates the minimal difference between Mongolic vs. Tungusic /i/ in terms of its transparency/opacity to labial harmony (van der Hulst & Smith, 1988). The contrastive hierarchy approaches to the Mongolic and Tungusic vowel systems in the previous chapters, coupled with a “fusional harmony” approach (Mester, 1986), provide a very simple but elegant solution to the minimal difference between the two languages, allowing us to maintain the Contrastivist Hypothesis (Hall, 2007). Chapter 6 addresses empirical and theoretical implications of the major findings in the main chapters and concludes the thesis.

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.

An emerging area of linguistic typology is sound change within particular types of phonological systems (Honeybone & Salmons 2014). Vowel harmony systems, for which many good descriptions now exist (Vago 1980; Ohala 1994), provide fertile ground for such investigations. In this paper, I examine sound change in language families with well-understood vowel harmony systems in both the proto-language and the modern languages: Turkic (Johanson & Csató 1998), Tungusic (Li 1996; Ko 2012), Mongolic (Janhunen 2003a, and Uralic (Abondolo 1998), as well as information from Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nez Perce and Nilo-Saharan languages. By examining the changes in vowels between the proto-languages and modern languages, I have synthesized the changes found in these systems into a typology. This typology appears to be true regardless of VH type, whether a system is front/back, high/low, or ±ATR. These changes can often create an additional rounding harmony where one was not previously present. The broader patterns of sound changes within VH systems can be categorized into three types: vowel space trading, neutralization at the edges of vowel space, and multiple vowel coalescence. Within these patterns, there are two types of phonetic behavior: cases where a vowel change results in a vowel that behaves according to its new phonetic features, and new vowels that continue to behave within the VH system according to their old phonetic features. Vowel space trading involves mid-vowels rising to high positions and high-vowels lowering to mid. This group of sound changes tends to involve parallel shifts without any neutralization; the mid-vowels rise, often conditioned by a following high vowel, and high-vowels lower to mid position. This shift is more common in back vowels than in front vowels, but accounts exist for both. This most greatly impacts change in harmony systems with height and rounding as harmonizing features; when the vowels behave according to their new phonetic values, they trigger the opposite set of harmonizing vowels. Neutralization at the edges of the vowel space involves VH oppositions mergers) to [i], [a], or [u], each respectively the result of a merger of harmonic vowel pairs and is common in the Tungusic and Mongolic languages (Li 1996; Zheng 1996; Ko 2012; Joseph and Whitman 2012; Janhunen 2003:5). Phonological structure often has functional underpinnings, typically rooted in perceptually contrastive features of vowels. Typological work on consonant and vowel inventories often reflects these statements, such as the most common three-vowel system being [i, a, u]. Importantly, in this typology, I found no neutralization to mid or central vowels. Finally, there is a group of common changes that create new oppositions through vowel coalescence. Most often, a new vowel is created from an existing vowel when a high front vowel /i/ occurs later in the stem. These innovations have the additional effect of altering the harmonizing features of the VH system or introducing new features to the counterpart contrasts, as found in Manchu (Li 1996). Now the vowels more strongly contrast by height rather than simply [ATR]. Coalescence also tends to create new oppositions (rounding), re-orient a VH system, or expand the domain of rounding. Through this study, I show that cross-linguistic patterns of vowel harmony change within these systems can be generalized and classified. Ultimately, this work contributes evidence to the literature on the functional dispersion theory of contrast, especially with regard to maximization distinctiveness of contrasts and minimization articulatory efforts (Flemming 2005; Flemming 2008), and is also a case study that conforms to ideas about vowel acquisition (Joanisse and Seidenberg 1998; Walker 2011). While historical linguists have been skeptical of these motivations for sound change when applied more generally, it appears to hold at least in the complex systems of vowel harmony.

Uyghur is generally believed to possess a vowel harmony system very similar to the one found in its relative Turkish, save for the fact that in Uyghur i is neutral and transparent. In this paper I argue on the basis of the phonological behavior of disharmonic vowels that Uyghur vowel harmony is actually quite different from the Turkish system in that harmony propagates only [-back] and harmony applies both cyclically and post-cyclically. I demonstrate furthermore that the Uyghur facts can only be insightfully accounted for in a theory that assumes derivations, cyclicity, and visibility. Theories of harmony that model transparency and opacity in terms of featural underspecification and prespecification respectively fail to account for derived transparency in Uyghur, and output-driven OT frameworks are unable to capture the range of surface facts produced by the interaction of cyclic and post-cyclic vowel harmony with post-cyclic vowel raising in cyclic and non-cyclic environments.