Vowel Harmony (Finnish and other Languages)

Ling 203

9/27/2010

Source: Comrie et al. (2003)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fenno-Ugrian_people.png

Source: http://www.travimp.com/images/maps/europe.gif

North Wind and the Sun

Source: http://www.aesoplanguagebank.com/

Vowel Harmony in Finnish

• Look at the text ‘North Wind and the Sun’. Do you notice any patterns in the vowels?

Front Back

Unrounded Rounded Unrounded Rounded

High i [i] y [y] u [u]

Mid e [e] ö [ø] o [o]

Low ä [æ] a [ɑ]

Vowel Harmony in Finnish

Neutral Front Back

High i [i] y [y] u [u]

Mid e [e] ö [ø] o [o]

Low ä [æ] a [ɑ]

Vowel Harmony in Finnish 1. Front vowels can appear with front vowels: tyttö ‘girl’, tytär ‘daughter’, pyöräh ‘wheel’ 2. Back vowels can appear with back vowels: kaura ‘oats’, talo ‘house’ 3. Neutral vowels can appear with neutral vowels: tiede ‘science’ 4. Neutral vowels can appear with front or back vowels: järvi ‘lake’, pesä ‘nest’, Suomi ‘Finland’, keskus ‘middle’ 5. Front and back vowels cannot occur with each other

Data from Lyovin (1997:81)

Vowel Harmony in Finnish

• Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilation

(e.g. across intervening vowels or consonants)

Vowel Harmony in Finnish

• Does not occur across word boundaries see ‘North Wind and the Sun’ text

• In compound words, occurs separately for each part

työ+aika

work+time

‘working hours’

• Frequently occurs with affixation: pöydä-llä tuoli-lla

table-on chair-on

‘on the table’ ‘on the chair’

Data from Comrie (1990:596)

Vowel Harmony in Hungarian

• Vowel classes similar to Finnish

• Affects only suffixes in Hungarian (i.e. less prevalent than in Finnish)

• Suffixes come in 1 to 3 forms.

• Some suffixes harmonize for rounding in front vowels as well.

Source for tables: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony#Hungarian

Vowel Harmony in Korean

• Vowel harmony used to be prevalent in Korean until the 1500s or so.

• Vowel changes and influx of a large number of Chinese words, which did not obey vowel harmony, led to loss of VH system.

• Now limited to two distinct types: 1. verb-suffix harmony 2. sound-symbolic harmony

Vowel Harmony in Korean

• Final ‘light’ vowel in root takes -a suffix • Final ‘dark’ vowel in root takes -ə suffix

cap-a ‘grab’ kiph-ə ‘be deep’ coh-a ‘like, be good’ cuk-ə ‘die’ ka-a ‘go’ se-ə ‘count; be strong’ po-a ‘see’ mək-ə ‘eat’

Vowel Harmony in Korean

(Based on Kim-Renaud 1976)

• Sound symbolic words have ‘dark’ or ‘light’ vowels. • Changing from a ‘dark’ to corresponding ‘light’ vowel changes

connotation slightly. phuŋdəŋ ‘splash’ (sound of large object hitting water) phoŋdaŋ ‘splash’ (sound of small object hitting water) pənccək ‘sparkling, twinkling’ (e.g. flash of light) panccak ‘sparkling, twinkling’ (e.g. stars)

Vowel Harmony in Korean

• Generally, vowels are divided into easily definable classes (e.g. high, low, front, etc.)...not in Korean

Consonant Harmony

• Consonant harmony is a type of long-distance assimilation

(e.g. across intervening vowels or consonants)

• Consonant harmony is much rarer than vowel harmony

Consonant Harmony in Navajo

• Called ‘sibilant’ harmony

/sì-ʔá/ → [sì-ʔá] ‘a round object lies’

/sì-tí/ → [sì-tí] ‘he is lying’ (e.g. on the ground)

/sì-ɣìʃ/ → [ʃì-ɣìʃ] ‘it is bent, curved’

/sì-te:ʒ/ → [ʃì-te:ʒ] ‘we (dual) are lying’ (e.g. on the ground)

Data from: Sapir and Hojier (1967:15)

References

• Comrie, Bernard. (Ed.). (1990). The world’s major languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Comrie, Bernard, Stephen Matthews, and Maria Polinsky. (Eds.). (2003). The Atlas of Languages, Revised edition. New York, NY: Quarto Publishing.

• Kim-Renaud, Young-Key. (1976). Semantic features in phonology: evidence from vowel harmony in Korean. Chicago Linguistics Society 12. 397-412.

• Lyovin, Anatole. (1997). An introduction to the languages of the world. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Sapir, Edward, and Harry Hojier. (1967). The phonology and morphology of the Navaho language. University of California Publications 50.