Issues in Vowel Harmony

Issues in Vowel Harmony PDF

Author: Robert Michael Vago

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1980-01-01

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 9027230056

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Vowel harmony is a well known phonological phenomenon found in a large number of languages spoken mainly in Eurasia and the African continent. In simple terms, vowel harmony is a law which governs the co-occurrence of vowels within a span of utterance, nearly always the word. The contributions of this volume focus on various (not always uncontroversial) aspects of vowel harmony that include typological investigations, phonetic/acoustic experimental studies, descriptions of individual systems, genetic and historical ramifications, and implications for a variety of theoretical models. This volume will prove to be a useful guide to the multifaceted issues posed by an often discussed and quite significant phonological process. This volume will stimulate further discussion and better understanding of the issues raised by the intricate process called vowel harmony.

Vowel Harmony and Correspondence Theory

Vowel Harmony and Correspondence Theory PDF

Author: Martin Krämer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-08-22

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 3110197316

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Vowel Harmony and Correspondence Theory covers the major issues in the generative analysis of vowel harmony and vowel harmony typology. The book offers an economical account of the most prominent features of vowel harmony systems (root control, affix control, dominance, vowel opacity, and neutrality) within the framework of optimality theory, extending the notion of correspondence to the syntagmatic dimension.The book contains a typological overview of vowel harmony patterns, an introduction to the basics of optimality theory including some of its most recent extensions and detailed studies of harmony systems in 10 languages from a variety of language families.

Locality in Vowel Harmony

Locality in Vowel Harmony PDF

Author: Andrew Nevins

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0262140977

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This work offers phonologists new evidence that viewing vowel harmony through the lens of relativized minimality has the potential to unify different levels of linguistic representation and different domains of empirical inquiry in a unified framework.

Asymmetries in Vowel Harmony

Asymmetries in Vowel Harmony PDF

Author: Harry van der Hulst

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-23

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 0192543067

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This book deals with the phenomenon of vowel harmony, a phonological process whereby all the vowels in a word are required to share a specific phonological property, such as front or back articulation. Vowel harmony occurs in the majority of languages of the world, though only in very few European languages, and has been a central concern in phonological theory for many years. In this volume, Harry van der Hulst puts forward a new theory of vowel harmony, which accounts for the patterns of and exceptions to this phenomenon in the widest range of languages ever considered. The book begins with an overview of the general causes of asymmetries in vowel harmony systems. The two following chapters provide a detailed account of a new theory of vowel harmony based on unary elements and licensing, which is embedded in a general dependency-based theory of phonological structure. 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 Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Tungusic languages. The volume provides a valuable overview of the diversity of vowel harmony in the languages of the world and is essential reading for phonologists of all theoretical persuasions.

An Introduction to African Languages

An Introduction to African Languages PDF

Author: George Tucker Childs

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9789027226068

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This book introduces beginning students and non-specialists to the diversity and richness of African languages. In addition to providing a solid background to the study of African languages, the book presents linguistic phenomena not found in European languages. A goal of this book is to stimulate interest in African languages and address the question: What makes African languages so fascinating? The orientation adopted throughout the book is a descriptive one, which seeks to characterize African languages in a relatively succinct and neutral manner, and to make the facts accessible to a wide variety of readers. The author's lengthy acquaintance with the continent and field experiences in western, eastern, and southern Africa allow for both a broad perspective and considerable depth in selected areas. The original examples are often the author's own but also come from other sources and languages not often referenced in the literature. This text also includes a set of sound files illustrating the phenomena under discussion, be they the clicks of Khoisan, talking drums, or the ideophones (words like English lickety-split) found almost everywhere, which will make this book a valuable resource for teacher and student alike.

Vowel Epenthesis in Loanword Adaptation

Vowel Epenthesis in Loanword Adaptation PDF

Author: Christian Uffmann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-02-14

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 3110934825

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While it is commonly assumed that languages epenthesize context-free default vowels, this book shows that in loanword adaptation, several strategies are found which interact intricately. Large loanword corpora in Shona, Sranan, Samoan and Kinyarwanda are analyzed statistically, and the patterns are modeled in a version of Optimality Theory which introduces constraints on autosegmental representations. The focus of this book is on English loans in Shona, providing an in-depth empirical and formal analysis of epenthesis in this language. The analysis of additional languages allows for solid typological generalizations. In addition, a diachronic study of epenthesis in Sranan provides insight into how insertion patterns develop historically. In all languages analyzed, default epenthesis exists alongside vowel harmony and spreading from adjacent consonants. While different languages prefer different strategies, these strategies are subject to the same set of constraints, however. In spreading, feature markedness plays an important role alongside sonority. We suggest universal markedness scales which combine with constraints on autosegmental configurations to model the patterns found in individual languages and at the same time to constrain the range of possible crosslinguistic variation.

Second Language Acquisition of Articles

Second Language Acquisition of Articles PDF

Author: MAR?A DEL PILAR GARC?A MAYO

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 9027253102

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Introduction : the interest of article acquisition for theories of SLA / María del Pilar García Mayo and Roger Hawkins -- Article choice in L2 English by Spanish speakers : evidence for full transfer / María del Pilar García Mayo -- Accounting for non-target like performance in L2 English article production by native speakers of Syrian Arabic and French / Ghisseh Sarko -- Questioning the validity of the article choice parameter and the fluctuation hypothesis : evidence from L2 English article use by L1 Polish and L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers / Marta Tryzna -- The processing role of the article choice parameter : evidence from L2 learners of English / Lucy Kyoungsook Kim and Usha Lakshmanan -- Accounting for patterns of article omissions and substitutions in second language production / Danijela Trenkic -- Article use and generic reference : parallels between L1- and L2-acquisition / Tania Ionin and Silvina Montrul -- Variability in the L2 acquisition of Norwegian DPs : an evaluation of some current SLA models / Fufen Jin, Tor A. Åfarli, and Wim A. van Dommelen -- Articles in Turkish/English interlanguage revisited : implications of vowel harmony / Heather Goad and Lydia White -- Article choice and article omission in the L3 German of native speakers of Japanese with L2 English / Carol Jaensch

Manchu

Manchu PDF

Author: Gertraude Roth Li

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9780824822064

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Manchu was the language of a group of people who in the sixteenth century lived to the northeast of China and later became known as Manchus. After establishing a new state in the southern part of Manchuria in the early seventeenth century, they conquered China and ruled as the Qing dynasty until 1911. Millions of Manchu records along with records in Chinese and Mongolian were created during nearly three hundred years in power. Nowaday, with an imperial Manchu court out of the picture, hardly anybody knows the language. With the accessibility of large number of Manchu documents, today scholars study Manchu to understand the documents.