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
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Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
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.

van der Hulst, Harry
2018.
Asymmetries in Vowel Harmony,

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