Exceptions are allowed in certain compounds and borrowings. Vowel harmony is found in many agglutinative languages. Vowel harmony is a type of assimilation which takes place when vowels come to share certain features with contrastive vowels elsewhere in a word or phrase crystal 1992 168. Vowel harmony 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. An optimality theoretic analysis of vowel harmony in kazan tatar kazan tatar is a kipchak language spoken in the republic of tatarstan ethnologue. Vowel phonemes unrounded rounded front back front back high i i u u nonhigh e a o o some languages have more distinctions e. Handbook for students of turkish arapca isteyen urbana gitsin. For englishspeakers, these vowel patterns may seem strange at first. The kipchak languages also known as the kypchak, qypchaq or the northwestern turkic languages are a subbranch of the turkic language family spoken by approximately 31.
Many of these languages are mutually intelligible although vocabulary usage, spelling and alphabet may differ. Handbook for students of turkish indiana university. Turkic languages have a pitch accent increase of the tone height, which tends to fall on the last syllable. Washington, jonathan north 2006c, where turkic stress falls. Ive taught two offerings of this course, one in 2010 and one in 2019. Dec 01, 2019 messerschmidt gives signs of only a cursory familiarity with the phonology of the languages he records. Turkish, the official language of the republic of turkey, is the primary language of more than 73 million people, and well over 100 million more people use various other turkic languages, some of which are very closely related to. In some languages, like yakut and kirghiz, harmony may be extended to vowel roundness. In turkic it is languagesspecific in occurrence and diverse in manifestation. Pdf a study on vowel harmony in the dialects of azerbaijan. Vowel harmony is typical for the languages of the volgakama area. The uzbek standard language of today is exceptional among the turkic languages in lacking vowel harmony. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other. The argument for reconstructing rtr harmony in kmt 2.
In order to provide additional help to new learners of turkish, hands on turkish is publishing a series of articles focusing on particular stickingpoints in the grammar that often confuse learners whose first language is not turkic. Every source use different terms to refer turkish vowel. Instead of memorizing the subtleties of each rule, it is more helpful to study the examples below by writing them down and repeating them with a loud voice, thus gaining a sense of the language. What is a vowel harmony sil glossary of linguistic terms. Characteristic features such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the turkic family. Turkmen is a member of the east oghuz branch of the turkic family of languages. The complications surrounding tofa vowel harmony may also be due to fluctuations from language endangerment. They all exhibit the same grammatical structure of agglutination and vowel harmony. Turkish is spoken in turkey, cyprus, and elsewhere in europe and the middle east. Word order is subjectobjectverb written turkmen today is based on the teke tekke dialect.
So for example, there are two different vowel harmony groups in igbo. The turkish vocabulary contains many words from arabic, persian and european languages. Examination of a carefully selected corpus of words frorri rcpr esentative languages and dialects reveals a continuous gradation from nearperfect vowel. Does a similar phenomenon appear in other ieromance langauges. Thus he combines vowels that cannot occur together in sakha according to the strict laws, common to all turkic languages, governing vowel harmony. In terms of typology, it is reasonable to examine uyghur for an occurrence of consonant harmony. In palatal vowel harmony, all the vowels of a given word are back or they are all front.
Uyghur belongs to the karluk branch of the turkic language family, which also includes languages such as uzbek. Vowel harmony is a basic phonetic rule of the turkic languages. One of the most basic concepts essential to the turkish language is vowel harmony that is, changing vowels in words so that the language flows more smoothly. Keywords labial harmony turkic languages government phonology. Washington, jonathan north 2006b, root vowels and affix vowels. Harmony may be based, for example, on backness finnish, atr as in even, a tungus language of siberia or rounding turkish. Subjectobjectverb word order is universal within the family. This paper focuses on changes in an ideological position of vowel harmony rules in uzbek for those who engaged in language politics or educational works in the early soviet era. An optimality theoretic analysis of vowel harmony in kazan. But does fairly close proximity to the morphological system of any dialect. A classification of the turkic languages which considers internal structural criteria alone take into account vowel harmony. Some of the most widely spoken languages in this group are kazakh, kyrgyz and tatar.
The intrasyllabic harmony in turkic is an assimilatory tendency, ex plainable by ease of articulation and partly predictable from universal phonetic constraints. As both turkic and uralic proto languages exhibited vowel harmony, we could suggest that the existence of vowel harmony in the area follows from the historical heritage and is a mere. The focus of our research is vowel harmony in turkic altaic languages. The altaic languages exhibit two kinds of sound harmony affecting the vowels and velar stops. An elementary approach to labial harmony in turkic languages 3 elements. I usually relate vowel harmony to uralic turkic languages, but not ieromance. Labial harmony in turkic, tungusic and mongolic languages. In the remaining chapters, this theory is applied to a variety of vowel harmony phenomena from typologically diverse languages, including palatal harmony in languages such as finnish and hungarian, labial harmony in turkic languages, and tongue root systems in nigercongo, nilo. In e type vowel harmony, the word ending will choose between either an a or an e, depending on the last vowel in the word before the word ending.
Challenging finalstress analyses in kazakh and kyrgyz pdf. An investigation of vowel anteriority in three turkic languages using. Prototurkic k, g, 1 are thought to have split into back and front allophones in most languages, pro ducing a consonant harmony with vowel qualities as. The proceedings from mot 2011 phonology in the 21st century. Vowel dispersion and kazakh labial harmony phonology. Patterns of defective labial harmony in turkic languages. Both have been inconclusive, but perhaps vowel harmony theorists there are now dozens of theories on the market might find this material useful for testing out their ideas. In section 5, i introduce the architecture in which vowel harmony occurs in cycles within a segment, making a crucial distinction between lexically invariable elements and. Kirgiz possesses the canonical turkic vowel inventory in which vowels are. Outside turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in germany, bulgaria, macedonia, northern cyprus, greece, the caucasus, and other parts of europe and central asia. Vowel dispersion and kazakh labial harmony volume 35 issue 2 adam g. The root of a word is basically of one, two or three consonants.
In general, russian loanwords do not appear to conform to vowel harmony. A classification of the turkic languages which considers internal structural criteria alone must take into account vowel harmony. Most turkic languages have eight phonemic vowels, which may be grouped according to backness, rounding, and height, such as kirghiz. Comrie 1997 mentioned the second person plural possessive as a good place to find rounding harmony effects. The a group consists of the vowel a, and all of the dotted igbo vowels.
The term vowel harmony is used in two different senses. Suffixes and prefixes will usually follow vowel harmony rules. The proto turkic language is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the turkic languages that was spoken by the prototurks before their divergence into the various turkic peoples. Vowels and vowel harmony in namangan tatar request pdf. When looking as the unstressed vowel patterns in particular, this reminds me of vowel harmony. Turkish shares many linguistic features with other turkic languages, such as agglutination, sov word order, vowel harmony, and a lack of grammatical gender. Further, because round harmony languages contain mid vowel harmony source triggers, it is unclear. On the description of vowel and consonant harmony languages with vowel or consonant harmony impose a limitation on the specification of certain features of vowels or consonants within a word. Phonology of sound harmony affecting the vowels and velar stops. More generally, vowel harmony exists in one form or another throughout the socalled altaic. The turkish languages system of vowel harmony consists of two different types. The dative and ablative were added to the elicitation set in order to make sure that vowel harmony applies across multiple. Pdf atr harmony in the altaic languages bert vaux academia. Pdf english turkish dictionary download full pdf book.
The present study comprehensively analyzes vowel harmony as an important phonetic rule in turkic languages. These systems exhibit a great deal of changeinstability, evenover the more than one millennium during which these languages have been recorded in writing. My research interests crosscut formal, fieldwork, computational, and laboratorybased approaches to phonology, focusing on feature spreading and harmony processes. Vowel harmony is a basic phonetic rule of the turkic. More complicated examples are elicited using sentence frames. Proto turkic separated into oghur western and common turkic eastern branches. Vowel harmony and noun inflection in caucasian urum. The main purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the treatment of vowel harmony, a kind of longdistance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels, in turkeys turkish and. But some dialects were formed and developed in the bilingual and even polylingual environment. Based on these two mentioned objectives, the model of this phonological framework is based on purely segmental and autosegmental approaches.
Navigating turkish culture the turkish language in context. Finnish, for example, shows a vowel harmony in which the vowels of a word are either all grave back or all acute front. This article covers the phonology of the uyghur language. In igbo, vowel harmony is the set of vowel pattern combinations that are usually found in one igbo word.
Labial harmony requires value agreement among vowels with regard to the feature rotmd. David harrison and others published vowel harmony and. Turkish which exhibits palatal harmony as well as roundness harmony see. Vowel harmony vowel harmony is a long distance assimilatory phonological pattern where vowels in a language harmonize based upon some common feature, such as backness or frontness, or roundedness essentially it means only certain vowels can occur near each other. Southwestern turkic languages thus distinguishing itself from some other turkic languages spoken in central asia. Types of labial vowel harmony in the turkic languages. Turkish language, turkish turkce or turkiye turkcesi, the major member of the turkic language family, which is a subfamily of the altaic languages.
Poppe 1960 that protoaltaic had a system of vowel harmony basically identical to that of modern turkish, which allows only one back value for vowels within. Vowel harmony also exists in other turkic languages, like kazakh and uyghur. Both have been inconclusive, but perhaps vowel harmony theorists there are now dozens of theories on the market. Messerschmidt gives signs of only a cursory familiarity with the phonology of the languages he records. Languages of the world department of computer science. Labial harmony in turkic and tungusic languages paper. Turkish is mutually understandable with many of these languages, such as azerbaijani, uzbek. Some of his languages have vowel harmony systems and if you want to read his ideas about vowel harmony, you can do it here. At its core, my research investigates the nature and computational properties of phonological knowledge, and refines the theoretical mechanisms used to model that knowledge. Although turkish is the largest language in terms of number of speakers in the turkic language family, it accounts for only about 35 percent to 40 percent of all speakers of turkic languages.
Southwestern turkic languages thus distinguishing itself from some other turkic. It was found that of the compared languages, only the turkish and the kazakh language preserved the classic eight proto. Vowel harmony is a type of longdistance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. Altaic languages show different patterns of vowel harmony see vago 1973 for an overview. There is also a high degree of mutual intelligibility among the various oghuz languages, which include turkish, azerbaijani, turkmen, qashqai, gagauz, balkan gagauz turkish and oghuzinfluenced crimean tatar. Docurent resume ed 102 821 ultan, russell some reflections on. A front vowel in the first syllable of a word would require the presence of a front vowel in the second syllable. If so, where does this phenomenon come from in spanish. Turkish also distinguishes itself from many other languages with its vowel harmony. The dialect of kirgiz described by comrie 1981 may be used to demonstrate both types of vowel harmony observed in turkic. Vowel harmony can be one of the most intimidating parts of turkish for beginners but with a little practice, quickly becomes second nature. An elementary approach to labial harmony in turkic languages. Recent changes in the vowel harmony potential of turkic sounds caused by linguistic and extralinguistic factors were described. Height effects in kyrgyz vowel harmony pdf, archived from the original pdf on 200701.
Apr 07, 2015 frontness harmony is known as buyuk unlu uyumu greater vowel harmony, while roundedness height harmony is known as kucuk unlu uyumu lesser vowel harmony. With gagauz, azerbaijani sometimes called azeri, turkmen, and. Previous literature has described a backness harmony system, with weak rounding harmony in the mid vowels comrie 1997, berta 1998, poppe 1968. In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a word have to be members of the same class thus in harmony. Two of the more wellknown works are nicholas poppes 1968 tatar manual. Uyghur, a turkic language spoken primarily in the xinjiang uyghur autonomous region features both. Vowel inventories of speci c languages are subsets of the set of all possible vowels that could arise from combining elements.
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