PHONOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF VOWEL HARMONY IN TÈÈ ON LITERATURE REVIEW
LITERATURE
REVIEW
2.0
Introduction
This
chapter presents the review of related and relevant literature and is divided
into empirical and theoretical review.
2.1 Conceptual Review
Various approaches have been employed
on the discussion of the process of vowel harmony in human languages. Theses
include; the segmental approach which views vowels harmony as an assimilation
process. The next is linear generative approach which employs the iterative and
simultaneous rules to account for vowel harmony and the prosodic approach.
According to Katamba (1989:211) vowel harmony is a phonological pattern in
which vowels, within some domain-typical the word-share one or more
phonological features, like lip rounding or tongue position.
According to Wikipedia free
encyclopedia, vowel harmony is a type of long distance, assimilation
phonological process involving the vowels that occur in some language. In
languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be
found near each other. In literature, the term vowel harmony is used in two
different senses. In the first sense, it refers to any type of long distance
assimilatory process of vowels, either progressive or regressive.
A chapter in West African Linguistics
Society (WALS) on vowel quality inventories on vowel harmony described in this
way; when a language is said to have vowel harmony this generally means their
within a word, including any affixes, it is only possible to combine the members
of certain subsets of the vowels together.
The chapter continues the vowel that
causes the vowel assimilation is frequently termed the trigger while the vowels
that assimilate (or) harmonized are termed targets in most languages, the vowel
triggers lie within the root of a word while the affixes add3ed to the roots
contain the targets. This may be seen in the Hungarian dative suffix below.
Root Dative Gloss
Város Varos-nak ‘city’
Öröm öröm-nek ‘Joy’
The
dative suffix has two different forms-nak-nek. The form appears after the root
with back vowels (a and o are both back vowels). The -nek form appears after
the root with front vowels (ö and e are front vowels).
Questions about how vowel harmony
starts in languages have not reviewed clear-cut answers. Probably, the most
common explanation of how vowel harmony starts in that it is a
grammaticalization of the phonetic effect of co-articulation, where the
properties of one segment influence how the speaker articulates surrounding
segments. However, phonologists in recent times have come to terms to certain
features which include:
(i)
Vowel height (i.e. high, mid or low
vowels) vowel backwardness (i.e. front, central or back vowels).
(ii)
Vowel roundness (i.e. rounded or
unrounded).
(iii)
Tongue root position (i.e. advance or
retracted tongue root, abbreviated + ATR).
(iv)
Nasalization (i.e. oral or nasal) in
this case, a nasal consonant is usually the trigger).
2.2 Languages with Vowel Harmony
Specifically, languages with clear cut
examples of vowel harmony are mainly, African languages. In recent times,
evidences from literature shows that some Turkic and Uralic languages have been
linked to vowel harmony. Below are some of the language with vowel harmony
apart from those of African languages.
2.2.1 Korean
According to Kramer, Martin (2003),
there are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive, negative, and neutral.
These categories loosely follow the front (positive) and mid (negative) vowels.
Traditionally, Korean had strong vowel harmony; however, this rule is no longer
observed strictly in modern Korean. For Vago, Robert M. (1994). In modern
Korean, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia, adjectives,
adverbs, conjugation, and interjections. The vowel (eu) is considered a
partially neutral and a partially negative vowel. There are other traces of
vowel harmony in modern Korean: many native Korean words tend to follow vowel
harmony such as (saram).
2.2.2 Mongolian
According to Kramer, Martin (2003) Mongolian possesses a
different system of vowel harmony. The system includes both a pharyngeal
harmony and a rounding harmony. In particular, the pharyngeal harmony involves
the vowels; a, U, O (pharyngeal)
and i, u, e, o (non-pharyngeal). Rounding harmony only affects the open vowels,
e, o, a.
ö e a
ö o
y i u
For
Vago, Robert M. (1994), Finish vowel harmony and case agreement exemplified by
mahdollisisa yllättävissää tilanteissa (“in possible unexpected situations”):
mahdollinen takes -ssa, yllättävä takes saa and yllättävä, with a neutral vowel
first but a back vowel second, takes -ssä.
In the Finish Language, there are
three classes of vowels – front, back, and neutral, where each front vowel has
a back vowel pairing. Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endings
– but not enclitics – have only archiphonemic vowels U, O, A, which are
realized as either back [u, o, a] or front [y, ø, æ] inside a single word. From
vowel harmony it follows that the initial syllabus of each single
(non-compound) word controls the frontness or backness of the entire word.
Non-initially, the neutral vowels are transparent to and unaffected by vowel
harmony. In the initial syllabus.
1.
A back vowel causes all non-initial
syllables to be realize with back (or neutral) vowels, e.g. pos+ahata+(t)a →
2.
A front vowel causes all non-initial
syllables to be realized with front (or neutral) vowels, e.g.
räj+ahta+(t)a→räjähtää.
3.
A neutral vowel acts like a front
vowels, but does not control the frontness or backness of the word: if there
are back vowels in non-initial syllables, the word acts like it began with back
vowels, even if they come from derivational endings, e.g. sih+ahta+(t)a →
sihahtaa cf. sih+ise+(t)a→sihistä.
For
example:
·
Kaura begins with back vowel – kauralla
·
Kuori begins with back vowel – kuorella
·
Sieni begins without back vowels –
sienellä (not *sienella)
·
Käyrä begins without back vowels –
Käyrällä
·
Tuote begins with back vowels –
tuotteeseensa
·
Kerä begins with a neutral vowel, but
has a non-initial back vowel – Keralla.
He
went on to say that some dialects that have a sound, change opening diphthong
codas also permit archiphonemic vowels in the initial syllable. For example,
standard i.e. is reflected as ‘ia’ or ‘iä’, controlled by non-initial
syllables, in the tampere dialect, e.g. tiä – tie btu miakka – miekka.
… as evidenced by tuotteeseensa (not
*tuotteeseensä). Even if phonologically front vowels precede the suffix-vowel
harmony. For example, Olympia is often pronounced lumpia. The position of some
loans is unstandardized (e.f. chattailla/chättäillä) or ill standardized (e.g.
polymeeri, sometimes pronounced polumeeri, and atoritäärinen, which violate
vowel harmony). Where a foreign word violates vowel harmony by not using front
vowels because it begins with a neutral vowel, then last syllable generally
counts, although this rule is irregularly followed. Experiments indicates that
e.g. miljonääri always becomes (front miljonääriä, but marttyyri becomes
equally frequently both marttyyria (back) and Marttyyriä (front), even by the
same speaker.
With respect to vowel harmony,
compound words can be considered separate words. For example, syyskuu (“autumn
month” i.e. September) has both u and y, but it consist of two words syys and
kuu, and declines “to back” and – pain “wards”, which give e.g. taakseäinkään
(not *taaksepäinkaan or *taaksepainkaan). If fusion takes place, the vowel is
harmonized by some speakers, e.g. tälläinen pro tällainen – tämän lainen.
Some Finnish words whose stems contain
only neutral vowels exhibits an alternative pattern in terms of vowel harmony
when inflected or forming new words through derivation. Examples includes meri
“sea”, meressä “in the sea” (inessive), but merta (partitive), not *merta; very
“blood”, verestä “from the blood” (elative).
2.2.3 Hungarian
Hungarian lies its distant relative
Finnish, has the same system of front, back, and intermediate (neutral vowels.
The basic rule is that words with front (“high”) vowels get from vowel suffixes
(Kèzbe -in (to) the hand), back, (“low”) vowel words back suffixes (Karba -in
(to) the arm).
The only essential difference in
classification between Hungarian and Finnish is that most dialects of Hungarian
do not observe the difference between Finnish ‘ä’ [æ] and ‘e’ [e] – the
Hungarian front vowel ‘e’ [æ] is the same as the Finnish front vowel ‘ä’.
2.2.4 Behaviour of Neutral Vowels
Intermediate or neutral vowels are
usually counted as front ones, since they are formed that way, the difference
being that neutral vowels can occur along with back vowels in Hungarian word
bases (e.g. rèpa carrot, kocsi car). The basic rule is that words with neutral
and back vowels usually take back suffixes (e.g. rèpa/ban in a carrot,
kocsi/ban in a car). The suffix rules for words with both kinds of suffixes are
the following:
·
The last syllable counts (typically in
words of visibly foreign origin): soför/höz, nUáansz/szal,
general/ás, október/ben, parlament/ben, szoftver/rel.
·
A regular exception i/l and è (but
usually e): they are transparent for the rule, so only the other sounds will be
taken into consideration, e.g. papir/hoz, kuplè/hoz, marèk/hoz, konflis/hoz.
·
Some l-syllable words using l are
strictly using front suffixes (vis >/et, hlr/ek), while some others can take
back suffixes only (szlj/ról, nyil > nyil/at, zsir/ban, ir/ás).
·
Some words can take either front or back
suffixes: farmer/ban or farmer/ben.
Suffixes
in multiple forms
While most grammatical suffixes in
Hungarian come in either one form (e.g. -kor) or two forms (front and back,
e.g. -ban/-ben), some suffixes have additional form for front rounded vowels
(such as ö, ö, Uá and Uá), e.g.
hoz/hez/-höz. An example on basic numerals.
2.3 Estonian
Standard Estonian has lost its vowel
harmony, the front vowels occurring only in the first (stressed) syllable. However
vowel harmony exists in its võro dialect.
2.4 Types of Harmony
Although vowel harmony is the most
well known harmony, not all types of harmony that occur in the world’s
languages involved only vowels. Other types of harmony involved consonants (and
is known as consonant harmony. Rarer types of harmony are those that involved
tone or both vowels and consonants (e.g. postvelar harmony).
2.4.1 Vowel Consonant Harmony
Some languages have harmony processes
that involved an interaction between vowels and consonants. For example,
Chilcotin has a phonological process known as vowel flattening i.e. post-velar
harmony) where vowels must harmonize with uvular and pharynegealized
consonants.
“flat” vowels [i, e, i, o, O,
«,
a]
Non “flat” vowels [i, i, u, U,
æ, E]
The
result was that back vowels were fronted after j or a palatal consonant, and
consonants were palatalized before j or a front vowel. Diphthongs were
harmonized as well, although they were soon monophthongized because of a
tendency to end syllables with a vowel (syllables were or became open). This
rule remained in place for a long time, and ensured that a syllable containing
a front vowel always began with a palatal consonant, and a syllable containing
j was always preceded by a palatal consonant and followed by front vowel.
2.5 Empirical Review
|
2.5.1 Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework adopted for
this study is auto-segmental. The most fundamental characteristics of the
autosegmental theory is that, phonological representation is non-linear, that
is, that a phonological representation is composed not of a single sequence of
entity but of several parallel sequences of entities arranged in two or more
tiers each of which is said to be independent of the others. They are arranged
in separate tiers through the use of association lines.
According to Goldsmith (199:137), the
main focus of this theory is the analysis of tone as an auto-segment capable of
having an independent existence from the segment that bears them. Tone is seen
as an associated feature of the segment through co-articulation with the
vowels.
Within the standard generative
phonology however, phonological representation was conceived as a linear
arrangement of segment and boundaries consisting of segmental and
suprasegmental representations. It was assumed that, superimposed on the
segmental layer were tone and stress and possibly a few other phenomena such as
vowel harmony. Both segmental and suprasegmental elements were thought to be
arranged in a row one after the other (Goldsmith 1990:10, Katramba 1989:189)
and Aziza 1997:8).
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