Vowel height harmony (fuit Takiyyudin phonology)

Tristan Alexander McLeay skrev:

> Hm, what is the basis for this harmony? I've only heard of backness
> harmony, rounding harmony, tongue root (ATR) harmony, and nasal
> harmony. This seems to be none of them.
>
> (*My* question is, are their any languages with vowel height harmony?)
Middle Korean had vowel height harmony.  I adopted vowel height
harmony in my conlang Sohlob before knowing of the Middle Korean
vowel height harmony though, the Sohlob vowel series being
high /i i\ u/ vs. low /& a Q/.  I often thought that this
ought to affect the consonants somehow, e.g. stops in high
words but fricatives/continuants in low words.  At the very
least there ought to be [k g x G] in high words but [q G\ X R]
in low words, since I have found that I can produce
coronal and palatal stops and fricatives alike both with
a slack and with a closed jaw, but velars tend to become
uvulars with a slack jaw.  Fortunately this would not wreak
havoc with the historic and synchronic consonant phonology as
the stop vs. fricative harmony would.  In fact it would be
entirely subphonemic, but I can always come up with some
historical sound change that is sensitive to this.
--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
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                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

--


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

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