Re: THEORY: Could Vowel Harmony be a Universal?

On Tue, 18 Jan 2000, Daniel A. Wier wrote:

> What other languages have "true" vowel harmony besides the well-known
> Finno-Ugric and Turkic?
Many languages of Africa have vowel harmony; the harmonizing
gesture is the relative retraction or advancement of the tongue
root. Such languages include (but are not confined to): Yoruba,
Wolof, Maasai, and Pulaar.

In North America, the only convincing examples I know of are Nez
Perce (Sahaptian) and Menomini (Algonkian). Chukchi, a Siberian
isolate, also has vowel harmony.

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.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu