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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. 135–156

Chapter 5
Co-patterns, subpatterns and conflicting generalizations in Hungarian vowel harmony

In this paper we examine coexisting patterns of variation in Hungarian front/back harmony conditioned by prosodic structure (the Polysyllabic Split), locality (the Count Effect), morphological structure/uniformity (Harmonic Uniformity) and the paradigmatic property of whether a suffix is harmonically alternating or harmonically invariant (Sequential Bias). We show that these patterns of harmony may be in conflict and some prevail over the others in environments of conflict. We argue for an approach that employs wide-scope generalisations holding over all the relevant forms where the conflict is resolved by specificity: when in conflict, the more specific ones win.

Keywords: Hungarian front/back harmony, variation, neutral vowels, count effect, Elsewhere Condition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Overview of variation in HVH
  • 3.The count effects: CE & PS
  • 4.Harmonic Uniformity
  • 5.Sequential Bias
  • 6.The structure of coexisting patterns in HVH
  • 7.Conclusion: Generalisations, co-patterns, subpatterns
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.15.05reb
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Rebrus, Péter, Péter Szigetvári & Miklós Törkenczy
2023. Morphological Restrictions on Vowel Harmony. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Rebrus, Péter & Miklós Törkenczy
2021. Harmonic Uniformity and Hungarian front/back harmony. Acta Linguistica Academica 68:1-2 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

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