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

"Raymond A. Brown" wrote:
> But a thought occurred to me somewhen round about 5:00 this morning: th=
e
> modifications of the consonants in "k=F8begyn" are clearly all allophon=
ic
> 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 .......
Perhaps I'm missing something, but in a language with, say, front-back
harmony, what would make /u/ and /y/ separate phonemes, at least any
more so that the modifications you stated.

That is, if a language had possible roots [k_wys_w%] and [kise], why
should [i] and [y] be called separate phonemes but not [k] and [k_w].=20
Granted, there's something more than allophones going on there, but what
to call phonemes, the exact same change is going on, roundedness?  You
could say that [k_w] and [k] were separate phonemes, while [y] and [i]
were conditioned allophones.  My analysis would be phonemic /kise/ (or
/k_wys%/) with a supersegmental feature of [+round] or [-round] over the
*whole word* rather than individual segments.

--=20
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