Cover not available
Part of
Approaches to Hungarian: Volume 15: Papers from the 2015 Leiden Conference
Edited by Harry van der Hulst and Anikó Lipták
[Approaches to Hungarian 15] 2017
► pp. 95–133

Chapter 4
A representational account of vowel harmony in terms of variable elements and licensing

This article develops a new theory of vowel harmony in which harmony is represented in terms of a licensing relationship between vowels that carry the harmonic element ‘invariably’ and vowels that carry this element ‘variably’; the latter vowels are the alternating vowels. Of central concern is the occurrence of opaque and so-called transparent vowels, which cause asymmetries in the harmony systems. I also provide an account of a four-way typology in palatal harmony systems that has been proposed in Kiparsky and Pajusalu (2003). The licensing relation that accounts for vowel harmony is local at the nuclear projection. I will discuss several cases which violate nuclear locality, proposing an auxiliary hypothesis that allows skipping a nucleus under specific circumstances.
Keywords: vowel harmony, transparent vowel, opaque vowel, licensing, locality, Turkish, Tangale, Baiyinna Orochen, Maasai, Hungarian, Khalkha Mongolian, Kinande, Kibudu
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The framework
  • 3.Asymmetries in VH
    • 3.1Opacity
    • 3.2On the form and function of phonotactic constraints
    • 3.3Context-free, context-sensitive and idiosyncratic neutralization
    • 3.4Transparency
    • 3.4A four-way typology
      • 3.4.1The RcvP account
      • 3.4.2Alternative accounts
        • 3.4.2.1 Van der Hulst (2015a) and a reply to Rebrus and Törkenczy (2015b)
        • 3.4.2.2 Polgárdi (2015)
  • 4.Transparency and opacity revisited
  • 5.Bridge locality
    • 5.1Unexpected transparency and opacity: The case of Khalkha (Mongolian)
    • 5.2Unexpected transparency of [a] in tongue root systems
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.15.04hul
References (50)
References
Anderson, John M. & Colin J. Ewen. 1987. Principles of dependency phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Stephen R. 1980. Problems and perspectives in the description of vowel harmony. In Robert M. Vago (ed.), Issues in vowel harmony, 1–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Archangeli, Diana & Douglas Pulleyblank. 1994. Grounded phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.Google Scholar
Bakovic, Eric. 2001. Vowel harmony and cyclicity in Eastern Nilotic. In Charles Chang, Michael J. Houser, Yuni Kim, David Mortensen, Mischa Park-Doob & Maziar Toosarvandani (eds.), 27th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Afroasiatic Linguistics, 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blumenfeld, Lev & Ida Toivonen. 2009. A featural paradox in Votic harmony. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Francisco. Handout.
Charette, Monik & Asli Göksel. 1998. Licensing constraints and vowel harmony in Turkic languages. In Eugeniusz Cyran (ed.), Structure and interpretation: Studies in phonology, vol. 4, 65–89. Lublin: Pase.Google Scholar
Clements, George N. & Engin Sezer (1982). Vowel and consonant disharmony in Turkish. In Harry van der Hulst & Norval Smith (eds.), The structure of phonological representations, part II, 213–255. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Demirdache, Hamida. 1988. Transparent vowels. In Harry van der Hulst & Norval Smith (eds.), Features, segmental structure and harmony processes, part II, 39–76. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.Google Scholar
Dienes, Péter. 1997. Hungarian neutral vowels. The Odd Yearbook 1997, 151–180.Google Scholar
. 2000. Hungarian transparent vowels: An account of Hungarian palatal harmony in terms of Government Phonology. Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös Loránd University, MA thesis.Google Scholar
Dresher, B. Elan. 2009. The contrastive hierarchy in phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gafos, Adamantios I. & Amanda Dye. 2011. Vowel Harmony: Transparent and Opaque Vowels. In Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume & Keren Rice (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology, vol. 4, 2164–2189. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gick, Bryan, Douglas Pulleyblank, Fiona Campbell & Ngessimo M. Mutaka. 2006. Low vowels and transparency in Kinande vowel harmony. Phonology 23. 1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, John & Geoff Lindsey. 1995. The elements of phonological representation. In Jacques Durand & Francis Katamba (eds.) Frontiers of Phonology: Atoms, Structures, Derivations, 34–79. London, New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Hulst, Harry van der. 2005. The molecular structure of phonological segments. In Phil Carr, Jacques Durand & Colin J. Ewen (eds.), Headhood, elements, specification and contrastivity, 193–234. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Dependency-based phonologies. In J. Goldsmith, A. Yu and J. Riggle (eds.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory, 533–570. Second Edition. Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. A framework for vowel harmony. In: Botma, Bert & Roland Noske (eds.), Phonological Explorations: Empirical, Theoretical and Diachronic Issues [Linguistische Arbeiten series], 155–190. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015a. Phonological ambiguity. Theoretical Linguistics 2015. 41(1–2): 79–87.Google Scholar
. 2015b. The laryngeal class in RcvP and voice phenomena in Dutch. In: Johanneke Caspers, Yiya Chen, Willemijn Heeren, Jos Pacilly, Niels Schiller & Ellen van Zanten (eds.) Above and beyond the segments, 323–349. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
. 2016. Vowel harmony. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics (OnLine).Google Scholar
. To appear. Asymmetries in vowel harmony. A representational account. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. in prep. Principles of Radical CV Phonology.
Hulst, Hulst van der & Beata Moskal. 2013. Patterns of defective labial vowel harmony in Turkic languages. Dilbilim Araştırmaları [Linguistic Investigations], Theme Issue: Updates to Turkish Phonology. 17–52.Google Scholar
Hulst, Harry van der & Norval Smith. 1986. On Neutral vowels. In Koen Bogers, Harry van der Hulst & Maarten Mous (eds.), The phonological representation of suprasegmentals, 233–281. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jungraithmayr, Hermann. 1971. The Tangale vowel harmony system reconsidered. Journal of African Languages 10(1). 28–33.Google Scholar
Kabak, Barış. 2011. Turkish Vowel Harmony. In Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume & Keren Rice (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology, Volume 5, 2831–2854. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaye, Jonathan, Jean Lowenstamm & Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 1985. The internal structure of phonological elements: A theory of charm and government. Phonological Yearbook 2. 305–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kidda, Mairo E. 1985. Tangale phonology: A descriptive analysis. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 1968/1973. How abstract is phonology? In Osamu Fujimura (ed.), Three Dimensions of Linguistic Theory, 5–56. Tokyo: Taikusha.Google Scholar
. 1982. From cyclic phonology to lexical phonology. In Harry van der Hulst & Norval Smith (eds.), The structure of phonological representations, part II, 131–177. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul & Karl Pajusalu. 2003. Towards a typology of disharmony. The Linguistic Review 20. 217–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kutsch Lojenga, Constance. 1994. KiBudu: A Bantu language with nine vowels. Africana Linguistica XI: 127–133. Tervuren: Musée Royal de L’Afrique Centrale.Google Scholar
. 2008. Nine vowels and ATR vowel harmony in Lika, a Bantu language in D. R. Congo. Africana Linguistica 14. 63–84.Google Scholar
Levergood, Barbara. 1984. Rule governed vowel harmony and the strict cycle. In C. Jones and P. Sells (eds.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society 14, 275–293. Amherst, MA: GLSA publications.Google Scholar
Li, Bing. 1996. Tungusic vowel harmony: Description and analysis. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam dissertation. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
Nevins, Andrew. 2010. Locality in Vowel Harmony. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Painter, Colin. 1971. Vowel harmony in Anum. Phonetica 23. 239–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polgárdi, Krisztina. 1998. Vowel Harmony. Leiden: University of Leiden dissertation. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
. 2015. Typology of weak disharmony: representations versus the frontness/backness scale. Theoretical Linguistics 2015, 41(1–2). 89–96.Google Scholar
Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky. 1993. Optimality Theory & Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Technical Report #2 of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey. Google Scholar
Rebrus, Péter & Miklós Törkenczy. 2015A. Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony. Theoretical Linguistics 2015, 41(1–2). 1–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015b. The monotonic behaviour of language patterns. Theoretical Linguistics 2015, 41(3–4). 241–268.Google Scholar
Ringen, Catherine. 1979. Vowel harmony in Igbo and Diola Fogny. Studies in African Linguistics 10. 247–259.Google Scholar
Ritter, Nancy A. 1995. The role of universal grammar in phonology: A Government Phonology approach to Hungarian. New York: New York University dissertation.Google Scholar
Schlindwein, Deborah. 1987. P-bearing units: A study of Kinande vowel harmony. In J. McDonough and B. Plunkett (eds.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society 17, 551–567. Amherst, MA: GLSA publications.Google Scholar
Steriade, Donca. 1981. Certain parameters of metrical harmony. Generative Linguistics of the Old World (GLOW) 5.Google Scholar
Svantesson, Jan-Olof. 1985. Vowel harmony shift in Mongolian. Lingua 67. 283–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Törkenczy, Miklós and peter, rebrus. 2011. Hungarian Vowel Harmony. In Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume & Keren Rice (eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology, 2963–2989. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vago, Robert. 1973. Abstract vowel harmony systems in Uralic and Altaic languages. Language 49. 579–605. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walker, Rachel. 2011. Vowel Patterns in Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Harry van der Hulst & Nancy A. Ritter
2024. The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony, DOI logo
Siptár, Péter
2019. Harry van der Hulst: Asymmetries in vowel harmony: A representational account. With assistance from Jeroen van de Weijer. Acta Linguistica Academica 66:4 ► pp. 621 ff. DOI logo
van der Hulst, Harry
2017. Deconstructing tongue root harmony systems. In Sonic Signatures [Language Faculty and Beyond, 14], ► pp. 74 ff. DOI logo
van der Hulst, Harry
2018. Asymmetries in Vowel Harmony, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 26 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.