Re: vowel harmony
| From: | Steven Williams <feurieaux@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, November 28, 2005, 3:15 |
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--- caotope <johnvertical@...> wrote:
> tomhchappell wrote:
>
> Sibilant harmony (that is, /s/ may not mix with /S/
etc) is,
> however, the only obvious natlang case of consonant
harmony
> I've read about.
I've read about retroflexion harmony in some language
families, but I can't for the life of me remember
which ones (perhaps Dravidian or Indo-Aryan?).
Basically, dental [n_d] tends to harmonize with
retroflex [n`], even at a distance of a syllable or so
in a word. Not sure about the plosives, though.
If it *is* a feature of some Dravidian or Indo-Aryan
languages, then it might be related to the sibilant
assimilation phenomenon (idle speculation).
Plenty of languages have systems of consonant
_dis_harmony to varying degrees. Ancient Greek and
pre-modern Japanese are both accessible examples, just
to name two that I could come up with off the top of
my head. I like toying around with this quite a bit.
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