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How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 5:36 pm
by Buran
I'm trying to make a conlang with dominant-recessive vowel harmony. The problem is, I don't want to create it ex-nihilo, but I can't find information on how dominant-recessive vowel harmony systems arise, whether the harmonising feature is [±ATR] or height (the two types of dominant-recessive harmony systems that seem most common). Does anyone have any examples of a language which doesn't have dominant-recessive harmony developing it?

Re: How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 5:42 pm
by linguoboy
Isn't this the kind of system that's arisen in some varieties of Andalusian Spanish?

Re: How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 5:46 pm
by Soap
I'm not sure I believe in height based harmony.... It seems to be mentioned in early linguistic literature, but looking at the same languages being described I often see those same languages now described as having ATR harmony.

I can't answer your last question,but my hunch is that the +ATR vowels are easier to pronounce and more stable, so tend to be dominant, but I'm not aware of this type of pattern... what languages have dominant/recessive ATR?

Re: How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 9:59 pm
by Buran
linguoboy wrote:Isn't this the kind of system that's arisen in some varieties of Andalusian Spanish?
Interesting... thanks for that. I may end up using that.
Soap wrote:I'm not sure I believe in height based harmony.... It seems to be mentioned in early linguistic literature, but looking at the same languages being described I often see those same languages now described as having ATR harmony.

I can't answer your last question,but my hunch is that the +ATR vowels are easier to pronounce and more stable, so tend to be dominant, but I'm not aware of this type of pattern... what languages have dominant/recessive ATR?
This Linguist List thread has some examples. Height harmony systems do exist, although they may be derived from ATR harmony systems. This paper argues that this is exactly what happened in Moro, which has dominant-recessive height harmony.

Re: How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2018 5:20 pm
by Nortaneous
IIRC, Kusunda has height harmony [and uvular consonants condition the low set], but functional load is low and there's a lot of free variation.

Re: How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 2:35 pm
by Imralu
Swahili has a bit of height based harmony. The applicative suffix is -i- or -e- (or -li- or -le- after a vowel. Which one occurs depends on the previous vowel of the stem, with -e- coming after e or o and -i- after a, i, u.

I don't know I how it formed though

Re: How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 10:24 pm
by Buran
These are all examples of vowel harmony, but what about the dominant-recessive aspect?

Re: How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:16 am
by ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪
In my own colloquial idiolect of Polish, with its features being shared with me by very few people, I have a front-back (or, to be more specific, palatal-nonpalatal) regressive vowel harmony, often triggered by suffixes, e.g.ładny ['(w)ɑd̪n̪ə] "nice" :> ładnie ['(w)ad̪ɲ̟ɪ] "nicely" or rzut [z̠utʰ] "throw (n)" :> rzucić ['ʒyt͡ɕʰit͡ɕʰ] "throw (v)". For me, it's just easier to pronounce vowels more frontly when there's a front one coming after it.

Re: How does dominant-recessive vowel harmony arise?

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 2:58 pm
by Šọ̈́gala
Modern Central Tibetan has height harmony which, based on the descriptions I've read, seems to be dominant-recessive (a high vowel anywhere in the word will raise all low vowels). That's a fairly recent development as far as I'm aware.