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

dirk elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...> wrote:
/snip/
> I know, this situation does not exist in natural languages. Features
> which do trigger harmony include: fronting/backing, rounding, or tongue
> root advancement/retraction.
And nasality. Guaran=ED, a South American language of the Paran=E1
river basin (Argentina-Paraguay-Uruguay), has nasal harmony,
where some affixes (the language has hundreds) appear in a=20
nasal version when the root includes a nasal consonant. For
example, <jajo->, <-peve> are certain verb affixes. When
applied to the verb root /etSa/ they form [jajoetSape've]
(non-nasal), but when applied to a nasal root like /endu/,
they are realized as [JaJoendume've] ([J] =3D palatal nasal,
Spanish <=F1>). I don't know how widespread the phenomenon is.
The language is heavily agglutinating, and probably most
affixes won't change, but some surely do.

If someone's interested, search the Web for "Jopara" -- that's
the name of the Guaran=ED-Spanish pidgin spoken in Paraguay; and
maybe you'll find something. I've lost the URL to my sources :-(.


--Pablo Flores