Vowel Harmony and Disharmony in Tuvan and Tofa
نویسنده
چکیده
Harmony systems are often described in the linguistic literature in a highly schematic and somewhat idealized fashion. Further, instances of disharmony within harmony languages typically have been treated as exceptional or anomalous, rather than as a natural and expected part of the harmony system. In documenting several vowel harmony languages indigenous to Siberia, we found both highly patterned surface disharmony and rich level of variation (and optionality) in harmony application. Such variation occurs along two axes. First, considerable variation in the application of harmony may be found across and even within speakers of a single language or dialect. We found this to be the case, for example, in communities undergoing language shift with speakers at varying levels of fluency. Second, harmony systems along a language/dialect continuum show subtle gradations and minimal differences. Thus, while harmony systems may yield at first glance to a simplified, schematic description, theoretical models of harmony must accommodate more complex patterns of attested variation along both axes. A goal of this paper is to illustrate harmony variation with new empirical data. Another goal is to enumerate instances of apparent disharmony in harmony languages, and to demonstrate that surface disharmony is a natural and expected component of such systems. Many harmony languages not only tolerate disharmony, but can also generate it in a productive manner. We propose that disharmony is not only pervasive, but also theoretically interesting in its own right. The idealized model of harmony that has prevailed
منابع مشابه
Vowel Harmony in Tuvan and Igbo: Statistical and Optimality Theoretic Analyses December 8, 2010 Swarthmore College
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