ATR- + vowel-harmony (Re: No Subject)

Hmpf, watch your subjects.

* ThatBlueCat@aol.com said on 2004-02-28 20:51:16 +0100
>
>    I'm  revamping one of my old languages, Gweydr, and turning it into
>    a, well, good language.  Since I had originally intended it to be a
>    vowel harmony  language (before I actually knew what this was), I
>    decided to do  two  things  I'd  wanted  to  do with vowel
>    harmony: (1) Create a Finno-Ugric-type vowel harmony system, *and*
>    (2) create an [ATR] vowel harmony system.
/snip vowel-harmony/

>    I'm having some problems with the ATR system, though. I've run into
>    this problem with the low vowels.  Low vowels are pretty much
>    always transcribed as [-ATR].  This in itself isn't a problem, as
>    the two could be opaque to [ATR]  harmony.   *However*, when they
>    came word initially, this means they would cause [-ATR] harmony to
>    spread.  So, if you had:
>    k&nelymi
>    It would surface as:
>    k&nElYmI
>    I  don't  like  this, and I don't want it.  I want low vowels to
>    *not* spread  [ATR]-ness  at  *all*.
Why not do like Akan (language of Ghana) and have the low vowels be
neutral as to ATR? Historically, the lone low vowel in Akan did have
both an ATR+ and an ATR- version, but that is no longer the case.

Then over to part two, will the neutral vowel block or pass through
ATR-ness? I can't remember what Akan does but here are examples:

Blocking, spreading rightwards == spreading leftwards

       kitakut
atr     + 0 -

Passing, spreading rightwards

       kitakut
atr     + 0 +

Passing, spreading leftwards

       kitakut
atr     - 0 -


t.