Re: Vowel Harmony Asthetically Pleasing?

On Sunday, December 26, 2004, at 11:57 , Joe wrote:

> Tristan McLeay wrote:
>
>> On 26 Dec 2004, at 9.25 pm, Joe wrote:
>>
>>>> Adam F. wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I am looking for opinions. Who finds vowel harmony in general to be
>>>>> asthetically pleasing and what do you think of my sketch?
>>>>
>>
>> I've never done a conlang with vowel harmony. 'M not too sure I like
>> it...
[snip]

> Well, I do like them in a posteriori languages.  They're nice and
> naturalistic.  In an a priori language, though, where you're working on
> the basis of what is probably and alien script (or no script at all),
> I'm a fan of efficiency.
Eh? What is _inefficient_ about vowel harmony?
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On Sunday, December 26, 2004, at 09:05 , # 1 wrote:

[snip]
> 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"
Turkish & similar systems are based on _both_ front ~ back _and_ round ~
unrounded vowels.

> or "nasal vowels" vs. "buccal vowels"?
Possibly, but I cannot think of any examples. A common type of vowel
harmony found in some African languages distinguishes between  series of
'lax' and 'tense' vowels.

>
> Are there "consonant Hamonies" ??
Yes - as you will have seen from various replies.

> maybe it is a kind of consonant hamony when, in english, the final -ed is
> voiced or not to fit with the last consonant...
No - that is _assimilation_.
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On Monday, December 27, 2004, at 01:20 , John Cowan wrote:

> J. 'Mach' Wust scripsit:
>
>> 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/.
>
> Yes, I think it's paculuar to ipply the term "vowol harmono" when the
> enfluence
> runs backwards.
Absolutely. IMHO it is misleading to apply the term _vowel harmony_ (in
which the vowel/s of the root word affect the vowels in affixes and
clitics.

Umlaut is, as John implies, the reverse. It is when a vowel in a suffix
affects the root vowel and, typically, the vowel that caused the change
then disappears - as in Mach's example above.

It seems that it is vowels att the apexes of the vocalic triangle that are
liable to cause umlaut, and this we find three types:
i-umlaut - the most common, typical of the germanic languages (e.g.
English foot ~ feet) and also common in the Celtic languages,  e.g. Welsh
_castell_ (castle) ~ _cestyll_ (castles).

a-umlaut - quite common in Celtic langs, e.g. Welsh for "white" is: _gwyn_
(masc.) <-- *windo- ~ _gwen_ (fem.) <-- *winda.

u-umlaut - which seems to be the least common but IIRC occurs in Swedish,
tho I do not know any examples.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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