Re: vowel harmony extension?

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

>Vowel harmony in Turkish is way cool.
>
>But I got to wondering, is there any such thing as *consonant* harmony in
>any language?  I dunno, maybe a word would only have all palatals, all
>labials, etc.
There are supposedly langs with coronal harmony. That is there are spans
where only coronal consonants are allowed. Sanskrit is one of the better
known languages that supposedly has this. In Sanskrit, there is a process
where retroflexion spreads to the right of a retroflexed sound. Any
intervening non-retroflexed coronal blocks the spread of retroflexion.

> Or go the other way and words would only have all
>fricatives, nasals, etc.
I don't think there is something called fricative harmony.

BUT... South American (and a few Meso-American) languages are famous for
nasal harmony. Morphemes are either all oral or all nasal. In many of
these languages, there are no underlying nasal consonants. But nasals
arise on the surface as nasal allophones of voiced stops. The twist to
this is that voiceless sounds are transparent to nasal harmony so that
they don't nasalize. For instance, in Tuyuca (a Tucanoan language from
Colombia and Brazil):

   ORAL                    Nasal
   wati  'dandruff'        w~a~ti    'demon'
   keero 'lightning bug'   ke~e~r~o~ 'dream'
   pee   'to bend'         pe~e~     'to prepare soup'
   bipi  'swollen'         mi~pi~    'badger'
   diti  'to lose'         ni~ti~    'coal'
   aka   'give food'       a~ka~     'choke on a bone'

[examples taken from: "Reinterpreting Transparency in Nasal Harmony" by
Rachel Walker]

Incidentally, my conlang Boreanesian has nasal harmony.

>Does this exist anywhere?  Or are there phonetic/speech-production/???
>reasons it probably wouldn't exist?  Because if not, I think I'll try it
>out sometime.  :-)
Well, coronal and nasal harmony exists, so I'm sorry if I spoiled your fun
there. But try them anyway. I did, and its lotsa fun.

Since you're interested, I have listed what my sources say are the clearest
cases of features that spread:

A. FEATURES THAT SPREAD LONG-DISTANCE
   Vocalic place gestures; e.g. Vowel harmonies
   Tongue shape/orientation; e.g. Coronal harmonies
   [nasal]; e.g. Nasal harmonies
   [aspiration]; e.g. Register harmonies
   Tone; e.g. Tone association/spreading

B. FEATURES THAT DO NOT SPREAD LONG DISTANCE
   Consonantal place gestures
   [voice]

So I guess your best bet for a non-existent harmony is fricative harmony,
but perhaps that could fall under [aspiration] as a possible feature that
spreads long-distance. Oh well... try it anyway.

-kristian- 8)