Re: THEORY: Could Vowel Harmony be a Universal?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of dirk elzinga
> Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2000 5:45 PM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Re: Theory: Could Vowel Harmony be a Universal?
> Some have argued that the pattern of consonant alternations
> which obtain in Navajo and other Athabaskan languages can be
> considered consonantal harmony (Chumash also did this). The
> segments involved are coronal fricatives; in Navajo, [s] and [S]
> in prefixes alternate depending on the presence of [s] or [S] in
> the stem.
Sanskrit had something similar to this. I don't remember the exact rules,
but retroflex consonants and high vowels tend to make dental/alveolar
consonants such as /t d t_h d_h s/ in the same word become retroflex.
However, the assimilation is halted if those consonants are separated from
the original retroflex ones by nasals, or something like that. It seems
pretty complex to me, and I don't quite grasp how high vowels cause coronals
to become retroflex. I could understand if they became palatal, but Sanskrit
has a separate series of palatals, separate from retroflexes.


Eric Christopherson
raccoon@elknet.net