Re: Vowel Harmony Asthetically Pleasing?

On Sun, 26 Dec 2004 16:05:30 -0500, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:

>Adam F. wrote:
>
>>i[1], e[@] are neutral
>>
>>í[i], é[e], á[a] are front vowels and can only be in words together or
>>with
>>the neutral vowels
>>
>>u[u], o[o], a[A] are back vowels and can only be in words together or
>>with
>>the neutral vowels
>
>Each vowel harmony I've heard of are based on "back vowels" vs. "front
>vowels" and maybe "central vowel"
>
>Are there some vowel harmonies where the harmony is "close vowels" vs. "open
>vowels", "rounded vowels" vs. "unrounded vowels" or "nasal vowels" vs.
>"buccal vowels"?
>
>Are there "consonant Hamonies" ??
In Guarani, a natlang spoken especially in Paraguay, there's a nasal harmony
in consonants, where [m, n, N, J] alternating with [mb, nd, Ng, dZ]
depending on whether there's a nasal vowel or not. Prefixes alternate
depending on the main word, and some suffixes do as well.


>maybe it is a kind of consonant hamony when, in english, the final -ed is
>voiced or not to fit with the last consonant...
I don't think that this is being described as consonant harmony, but in the
end, it's all processes where certain sounds change due to surrounding sounds.

I've also seen the Germanic umlauts described as vowel harmony processes,
though it's cases where it's not the vowels of the affixes that change
according to the main word, but the main word's vowels that change according
to the affixes, as in _gesti_ (guests) where the original /a/ is changed to
an /e/ because of the following /i/.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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