Directionality and Locality in Vowel Harmony
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DIRECTIONALITY AND LOCALITY IN VOWEL HARMONY With special reference to vowel harmony in Assamese Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Janskerkhof 13 fax: +31 30 253 6406 3512 BL Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration: “Tunnel harmony” by Berit Gehrke (photograph) and Shakuntala Mahanta (manipulation) ISBN 978-90-78328-47-6 NUR 616 Copyright © 2007: Shakuntala Mahanta. All rights reserved. DIRECTIONALITY AND LOCALITY IN VOWEL HARMONY With Special Reference to Vowel Harmony in Assamese Directionaliteit en Lokaliteit in Vocaalharmonie Met speciale aandacht voor vocaalharmonie in het Assamees (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) P r o e f s c h r i f t ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. W.H. Gispen, ingevolge het besluit van het College voor Promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 15 juni 2007 des ochtends te 10.30 uur door S h a k u n t a l a M a h a n t a geboren op 4 Juli, 1975, te Jorhat, Assam, India Promotor: Prof. dr. W. Zonneveld N.B. Please note that this publication is a slightly revised version of the PhD dissertation defended on 15 June, 2007 at Utrecht University. CONTENTS Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................... i Chapter 1..........................................................................................................................1 General Introduction.......................................................................................................1 1 Goals of this dissertation............................................................................................1 2 Languages discussed in this dissertation....................................................................4 3 Overview of the dissertation .......................................................................................6 4 Symbols and data collection .....................................................................................10 Chapter 2........................................................................................................................12 Vowel harmony: background and a new perspective.................................................12 1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................12 1.1 Definitions of harmony......................................................................................12 1.2 Principles of vowel harmony .............................................................................13 2 Conditions on harmony ............................................................................................15 2.1 ATR harmony.....................................................................................................16 2.2 ATR systems – vowel inventories and domains ..........................................16 3 Possible determining factors in vowel harmony.......................................................22 3.1 Morphological factors........................................................................................22 3.2 Phonological factors : emergence of the unmarked...........................................23 3.3 Positional factors ...............................................................................................23 3.4 Featural restrictions - rounding harmony...........................................................24 4 Metaphony, umlaut and non-iterative harmony........................................................26 4.1 Opaque and transparent vowels .........................................................................27 4.2 Domains in harmony, umlaut and metaphony ...................................................28 5 Conclusions ..............................................................................................................29 Chapter 3........................................................................................................................30 Theoretical approaches to vowel harmony..................................................................30 1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................30 2 Rule-based, Autosegmental and Metrical approaches .............................................30 3 Optimality Theory.....................................................................................................32 4 Taking stock of directionality in OT ........................................................................35 4.1 A discussion of sequential markedness constraints ...........................................35 4.2 Positional Faithfulness.......................................................................................40 4.3 Harmony as Correspondence : Stem-Affix Faithfulness ...................................40 4.4 Syntagmatic Correspondence ............................................................................43 4.5 Harmony in AGREE, ALIGN and SPREAD ...........................................................44 4.6 Optimal Domains Theory ..................................................................................47 4.7 Span Theory.......................................................................................................47 5 Approaches to umlaut and metaphony......................................................................50 5.1 Conclusion.........................................................................................................51 Chapter 4........................................................................................................................52 Vowel harmony in derived and non-derived words of Assamese.............................52 1 Introduction ..............................................................................................................52 1.1 Background to Assamese...................................................................................52 1.2 Vowel inventory ................................................................................................54 1.3 An acoustic experiment of Assamese vowels....................................................56 1.4 The phonetics of the Assamese high vowel /ʊ/..................................................58 2 Vowel co-occurrence restrictions in underived Assamese words.............................59 2.1 Collocational restrictions in simplex words of two syllables.............................59 2.2 high vowels - /i/ and /u/ ...............................................................................60 2.3 The high vowel /ʊ/.............................................................................................64 2.4 The mid vowels / ɛ, ɔ, e, o/ ................................................................................67 2.5 The low vowel /ɑ/..............................................................................................72 2.6 Trisyllables/Quadrisyllables .......................................................................74 2.7 Directionality...............................................................................................75 2.8 Conclusion.........................................................................................................77 3 Agreement in the derived morphology......................................................................78 3.1 Collocational restrictions in derived words .......................................................78 3.2 high vowels /i/ and /u/........................................................................................79 3.3 The vowel /ʊ/.....................................................................................................83 3.4 The mid vowels /ɛ/ /ɔ/ /e/ and /o/......................................................................86 3.5 The low vowel /ɑ/..............................................................................................88 4 Morphological concatenation processes in the non-verbal morphology.............90 4.1 Affixes which result in vowel harmony.............................................................91 4.2 Prefixes and vowel harmony .............................................................................93 4.3 Vowel harmony in verbs....................................................................................94 5 Exceptional occurences in vowel harmony.............................................................100 6 Summary.................................................................................................................103 Chapter 5......................................................................................................................105 Regressive vowel harmony and Sequential Markedness constraints......................105 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................105 1.1 Descriptive facts ..............................................................................................107 2 Towards a formal analysis of Assamese: ATR vowel harmony governed by markedness and faithfulness constraints ...................................................................110 2.1 ATR harmony in the presence of mid vowels ..................................................115 2.2 ATR harmony in the presence of high and mid vowels....................................116