Re: THEORY: vowel harmony [was CHAT: Another NatLang i like]
| From: | Raymond A. Brown <raybrown@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, June 28, 1999, 5:07 |
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At 5:45 pm +0200 27/6/99, Kristian Jensen wrote:
[....]
>
>Based on this, one could assume that a very narrow transcription of
>the Mongolian word cited "k=F8begyn" as [k<+>_w=F8b<+>eg<+>_wyn] where
>all the consonants are fronted in anticipation of front consonants
>and some rounded in anticipation of rounded vowels. Front/back
>'spread' or 'harmony'? Its difficult for me to picture that fronting
>in vowel harmony does _not_ also 'spread' to consonants. Afterall,
>all vowels are fronted so I suspect that all consonants would also be
>fronted to a certain degree in anticipation of all the front vowels.
Yes, I'm sure this so.
But a thought occurred to me somewhen round about 5:00 this morning: the
modifications of the consonants in "k=F8begyn" are clearly all allophonic
modifications - there is no substitution of one phoneme by another or a
modification so great that a consonant merges with that of another
consonant phoneme .......
>Again, how is that different from nasal spread?
=2E...but don't the consonants affected by nasalization actually merge with
or get replaced by different phonemes?
Or am I still only half-awake? :-)
Ray.