Vowel harmony
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 01/04/2019

Vowel harmony, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=44902 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Assimilation_(linguistics)
#Vowel-harmony_languages
Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. A vowel or vowels in a word must be members of the same class (thus "in harmony"). In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other. Suffixes and prefixes will usually follow vowel harmony rules. Many agglutinative languages have vowel harmony.

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". When used in this sense, the term "vowel harmony" is synonymous with the term "metaphony".

In the second sense, "vowel harmony" refers only to "progressive" vowel harmony (beginning-to-end). For "regressive" harmony, the term "umlaut" is used. In this sense, "metaphony" is the general term while "vowel harmony" and "umlaut" are both sub-types of metaphony. The term "umlaut" is also used in a different sense to refer to a type of vowel gradation. This article will use "vowel harmony" for both progressive and regressive harmony.

Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). In other words, "harmony" refers to the assimilation of sounds that are "not" adjacent to each other. For example, a vowel at the beginning of a word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at the end of a word. The assimilation occurs across the entire word in many languages. This is represented schematically in the following diagram:

In the diagram above, the V (type-a vowel) causes the following V (type-b vowel) to assimilate and become the same type of vowel (and thus they become, metaphorically, "in harmony").

The vowel that causes ...