University of California, Los Angeles T HE T YPOLOGY OF R OUNDING H ARMONY: A N O PTIMALITY T HEORETIC A PPROACH A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by Abigail Rhoades Kaun 1995 © Copyright by Abigail Rhoades Kaun 1995 ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................................ v Abstract................................................................................................................................................................................ vi Chapter 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Rounding Harmony in Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic.......................................................................... 3 2.1 Turkic ............................................................................................................................................................................. 3 2.2 Korn's Typology (1969)............................................................................................................................................... 8 2.3 Rounding Harmony and [+high]................................................................................................................................ 10 2.3.1 Western Turkic—Karac#ay ....................................................................................................................... 10 2.3.2 Southern Turkic—Azerbaydzhan (Comrie, 1981) & Turkish .............................................................. 12 2.3.3 Northern Turkic—Tuva (Krueger, 1977)................................................................................................ 14 2.3.4 Eastern Turkic —Uygur............................................................................................................................. 17 2.4 Rounding Harmony and [a high]............................................................................................................................... 19 2.4.1 Kachin Khakass (Korn, 1969).............................................................................................................. 19 2.4.2 Yakut (Krueger, 1962) ............................................................................................................................... 20 2.5 Rounding Harmony & [back] ..................................................................................................................................... 24 2.5.1 Kazakh (Korn, 1969) .................................................................................................................................. 24 2.5.2 Kirgiz (Herbert & Poppe’s (1963) Dialect)............................................................................................. 25 2.5.3 Shor (Korn, 1969)....................................................................................................................................... 26 2.6 Conclusions—Turkic................................................................................................................................................... 27 2.7 Mongolian..................................................................................................................................................................... 27 2.7.1 Early Mongolian........................................................................................................................................ 27 2.7.2 Western Mongolian—Kalmyk................................................................................................................ 29 2.7.3 Eastern Mongolian—Khalkha................................................................................................................. 33 2.7.4 Eastern Mongolian—Shuluun Höh........................................................................................................ 36 2.7.5 Eastern Mongolian—Buriat..................................................................................................................... 40 2.8 Tungusic........................................................................................................................................................................ 45 2.8.1 Oroch........................................................................................................................................................... 47 2.8.2 Ulcha ........................................................................................................................................................... 51 2.8.3 Oxots Even ................................................................................................................................................. 54 2.9 Conclusions—Mongolian & Tungusic .................................................................................................................... 59 Chapter 3 A Statement of Rounding Harmony Typology ........................................................................................... 60 3.1 A Brief Look at Other Language Families................................................................................................................. 60 3.2 Backness-Neutral Types ............................................................................................................................................. 60 3.3 Non-backness-neutral types ...................................................................................................................................... 61 3.4 The Typology............................................................................................................................................................... 62 Chapter 4 Against a Rule-Based Approach to the Typology of Rounding Harmony ........................................... 65 Chapter 5 The Phonetic Motivation of the Constraints .............................................................................................. 70 5.1 Positional Neutralization (Steriade 1993, 1995) ........................................................................................................ 70 5.2 Suomi’s Perceptual Motivation Theory (1983)........................................................................................................ 72 5.3 What Constitutes a “Perceptually Difficult Contrast?”......................................................................................... 73 5.3.1 F1 vs. F2...................................................................................................................................................... 73 5.3.2 Enhancement.............................................................................................................................................. 74 iii 5.4 Lip Rounding and the Height and Backness Dimensions ..................................................................................... 75 5.4.1 The Articulation of Rounded Vowels —Linker (1982).......................................................................... 75 5.4.2 The Perception of Rounded Vowels —Terbeek (1977) ........................................................................ 78 5.5 *ROLO ........................................................................................................................................................................... 80 5.6 Uniformity ................................................................................................................................................................ 83 5.6.1 Multiple Linking in Phonology and Phonetics (Boyce, 1988)........................................................... 85 5.6.2 Excursus—Another Uniformity Effect................................................................................................... 87 Chapter 6 An Optimality-Theoretic Account of the Typology of Rounding Harmony.......................................... 89 6.1 Optimality Theory ........................................................................................................................................................ 89 6.2 Preliminary Constraint Set........................................................................................................................................... 90 6.3 Constraint Decisions ................................................................................................................................................... 99 6.4 Preliminary Typological Predictions.......................................................................................................................... 105 6.5 Summary—Preliminary Constraint Set...................................................................................................................... 118 6.6 An Additional Constraint ........................................................................................................................................... 119 Chapter 7 Implementation ................................................................................................................................................. 123 7.1 Harmony as Alignment—Smolensky’s Analysis of Finnish Transparency .................................................. 123 7.2 Against Harmony as ALIGNMENT—Data from Hungarian................................................................................