Re: NATLANG: Vowel harmony rules?

tracsko@FREEMAIL.HU wrote:

<<The close-open harmony is not related to the vocalic structure of the
words but it is a lexical attribute of the stems. Normal stems require
close suffix vowels, in this case an I-type one <-1r, -ir, -ur, -u:r>.
The so-called "lowering" stems govern open vowels, (=articulated by low
tongue position), that is A-type <-ar, -ir>. (N.B. vowel-final stems
bear non-vocalic <-r>).>>

<snip the rest>

How utterly surreal...   I just wrote my final morphology paper on just this
phenomenon.   First of all, looking through the entire set of Turkish words
over this past quarter, I only found eleven (maybe thirteen?) verbs that
did this, and they *only* do it in the Aorist--and, it's only verbs.   Or
wait...
Actually, I think I'm talking about a completely different phenomenon.   For
the Aorist, you can get either an /-r/, /-Ar/ or /-Ir/ suffix.   You get /-r/
after vowels, /-Ar/ after most monosyllabic stems, and /-Ir/ after everything
else.   This seems to be the opposite effect of what you're talking about.

Oh no, wait a minute: It still works.   Unfortunately, the description you
came
up with isn't adequate.   I'm referring to:

<<Despite of the fact that lowering--non-lowering harmony is a lexical
feature, we can predict it: lowering stems are one-syllable consonant-
final verbal stems, expect when final consonant is <-l> or <-r> and
there are four additional verbs ending in <-n> that are non-lowering
(<san-, yen-, den-, kon->).>>

First of all, are you suggesting that this is phonological in some way?
Because
if so, consider:

yen = "to overcome" > yenar = "to overcome (aorist)"
yen = "to be eaten" > yenir = "to be eaten (aorist)"

Also, I'm pretty sure I found a handful of monosyllabic verb stems than end
in
both /r/ and /l/ that take /-Ar/ in the Aorist.   I'll check my notes
tomorrow.

That aside, though, have you read anything anywhere about this phenomenon?
If so, can you let me know?   I was trying to find something on this, but
couldn't
find anything.

-David
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