Vowel harmony and disharmony in Tuvan and Tofa
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New Haven: Yale University, Department of Linguistics, 1999. — 15 p.Vowel harmony may be most simply described as a requirement that certain vowels agree with other vowels in the same word in terms of some particular feature. Harmony may be based, for example, on backness (Finnish), ATR (as in Even, a Tungus language of Siberia) or rounding (Turkish). Tuvan and Tofa, like most Turkic languages, exhibit both backness harmony (BH) and rounding harmony (RH). The two systems can be seen to interact in complex ways, and their interaction sometimes gives rise to patterns of disharmony. We examine a number of those patterns herein. The symmetry of the Tuvan and Tofa vowel systems allows segments to pattern together according to height, backness and rounding. These natural classes provide the basis for vowel harmony.