Re: THEORY: vowel harmony [was CHAT: Another NatLang i like]

Kristian Jensen wrote:
> Other vowel features that are harmonized like
> front/back or roundness are not that easily applied (if at all like
> front/back) to consonants.
Well, roundedness *can* be applied to consonants, altho it's typically
called "labialization" there.  I could imagine a language where you
could have stems like

/kitesa/ or
/k_wyt_wo"s_wA/, that is, all round or all unround.

> In other words, vowel features like
> front/back 'spreads' less easily across vowels in a morpheme than
> nasality.
That I agree with.

> So front/back harmony is much like saying 'front/back
> spreading, just as well as nasal harmony is much like saying 'nasal
> spreading'.
Right, and both harmony and spreading frequently have exceptions.  In
"nasal spreading", some consonants, like /p/ are unaffected.  And, in
some languages, certain vowels are unaffected by "harmony", thus, in an
example that someone gave (I forget who), the vowel /-i/ is not affected
by front/back harmony.

> Or have I utterly misunderstood something again?
I don't think so.

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