Re: Consonant harmony (and intro)

Hi!

Kate Sherwood <snapping.dragon@...> writes:
> Hello, list!
>
> I've been lurking for a while, but I haven't had a reason to post yet.
> I'm an undergrad who hopes to go into linguistics, but I haven't had
> much of an opportunity to study the subject formally yet. I'll
> probably only pop up now and then to ask questions, since I don't
> really know enough yet to *answer* many.
Welcome to the list!

>...
> I'm creating a language for a friend's fantasy novel and she really
> likes the idea of consonant harmony. The problem is that I don't
> really know how it's likely to work given the phonemes I've already
> chosen (which she also really likes).
>
> I have some limited info on consonant harmony in Barbareño Chumash and
> Tahltan from Mithun's _Languages of Native North America_, but I'm
> looking for other sources of inspiration. What other natural languages
> use consonant harmony?
Well, I don't know too many, but I'll try to start the thread of
answers with some vague snippets of information from my memory:

I only know assimilation rules: Georgian has rules for its complex
clusters. I think two:
   a) ejectiveness spreads and
   b) point of articulation moves backwards only

b) is a bit mysterious to me, since there are words like 'vprtskvni'.
I think it's taken to be two groups: 'vprtsk' + 'vni', both groups
following rule b).  Exact rules are better taken from other sources
than me, however.

A language with consonant 'disharmony' is Ancient Greek where
aspiration does a lot of strange things in clusters and in words.  I
don't know the precise rules, however, hopefully Ray or someone else
can clarify this: I think in clusters adjacent plosives must share
aspiratedness and voicedness (again, this is assimilation) and in
words, only one cluster may be aspirated (consonant disharmony).

Further, h and s interact in funny ways due to a sound shift that
changes older s to h in some situations.  This interacts with the
aspiration rules, I think.

Anyway, there was a thread about consonant harmony here:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0209d&L=conlang&D=0&P=22257

Enjoy the list! :-)

**Henrik