Chapter 5 Vowel Harmony in Deori
5.2 A TR Harmony
[ATR] based vowel harmony is documented for many African languages (cf. Archangeli and Pulleyblank, 1994; Casali, 2003, 2008; Clements, 2000; Starwalt, 2008). The greatest concentration of languages having ATR harmony is the Nilotic languages of East Africa, Niger- Congo language branches of Gur, Kwa, Adamawa Eastern, Mande and Benue-Congo, and Afro- Asiatic family, mainly Somali (Casali, 2003, 2008). Languages with [ATR] harmony either exhibit 10 vowels or have seven or nine vowels (Casali, 2003; Starwalt, 2008; Obikudo, 2008).
In languages with the 10-vowel system, the distinction for ATR is maintained equally for all sets of vowels at all vowel heights; in languages, with 9 vowel system the low vowel /ɑ/ lacks a harmony counterpart; and in languages with the 7-vowel system either they lack mid [+ATR] vowels /e/ and /o/ or [+high -ATR] vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/. In languages with 7-vowel system, [ATR]
interaction is confined mostly to the four mid vowels, or the high vowels contrasting in [±ATR].
Languages having 10-vowel system exhibiting [ATR] harmony are Twi, a dialect of the Akan language (Berry, 1957) and Bongo, a Central Sudanic (Nilo-Saharan) language of South Sudan (Kilpatrick, 1985); languages with 9 vowel system exhibiting [ATR] harmony are Akan, a language of Ghana (Clements, 1981; Van der Hulst and Smith, 1986); languages with 7-vowel system exhibiting [ATR] harmony with no contrasts among the mid vowels are Kinande (Mutaka, 1995) and with no distinction of the high vowels is Yoruba (Awobuluyi, 1967; Bamgbose, 1967;
Archangeli and Pulleyblank, 1989). Assamese, an Indo-Aryan language, exhibits 8 surface vowels /i, u, ʊ, e, o, ɛ, ɔ, ɑ/. The low vowel /ɑ/ in the Assamese lacks a harmony counterpart and the mid vowels [e] and [o] occur only under the circumstances of vowel harmony and in some exceptional circumstances (Mahanta, 2007).
Several impressionistic (Pike, 1967; Stewart, 1967) and instrumental (Ladefoged, 1968;
Painter, 1973; Lindau, 1976, 1979, 1987) studies have established that the harmonic feature in most West and East African languages involves a more advanced position of the tongue root in vowels of one set (now known as [+ATR] set) than the other. Stewart (1971), Lindau (1978), and Hall and Creider (1998) state that [+ATR] vowels are pronounced with the root of the tongue advanced or with an expanded pharynx and [-ATR] vowels are pronounced without any such feature. “As the advancement of the tongue root tends to raise the tongue body, one of the strongest phonetic indicators of ATR is probably the change in the first formant frequency F1, the primary acoustic correlate of tongue height” (Casali, 2008, p. 506). Hence, there is an acoustic difference between [+ATR] vowels e.g. /i/, /u/, /e/ and /o/, and their corresponding [-ATR] vowels e.g. /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /ɛ/ and /ɔ/. Furthermore, it has been well-attested in the literature that while [ATR] harmony languages [+ATR] vowels /i/, /u/ and [-ATR] vowels /ε/, /ɔ/, and /ɑ/ are unmarked vowels, high [-ATR] vowels /ɪ/, /ʊ/ and non-high [+ATR] vowels /e/, /o/ are marked vowels.
5.2.1 Directionality
Baković (2000, 2001, 2003) has stated that the directionality in a vowel harmony language is predictable from the morphological structure of the language and has rejected stipulating directionality (similar discussion is also available in Krämer 2001 and Krämer 2003). He further states that directionality is “root-outward”, i.e., the spreading should proceed from root to affixes. Baković (2000) and Krämer (2003) have shown that directionality is unidirectional only
in root-outward systems, i.e. root to prefix, and is bidirectional in dominant-recessive systems, i.e., root to suffix and prefix. However, Baković’s proposition of the direction of spreading as
“root-outward” does not incorporate languages such as Karajá (Riberio, 2002), Assamese and Pulaar (Mahanta, 2007) which involve harmony from suffixes to stems (right-to-left), but not from prefixes to stems (left-to-right). Mahanta (2007) has shown that in languages such as Assamese, Karajá, and Pulaar, directionality is not root-outward, yet it exhibits a unidirectional vowel harmony pattern, unlike Baković (2000) and Krämer (2003). It has been noted that “the unidirectionality in harmony languages is not an outcome of a root-outward system, but rather an instance of precedence relation, wherein a marked sequence of vowel features is prohibited”
(Mahanta, 2007, p. 3).
5.2.2 Opaque segments
Vowel harmony is based on the fact that one vowel can affect another vowel even across a consonant (Öhman, 1966; Recasens, 1987; Fowler, 1981; Magen, 1997; Beddor et al., 2002;
Modarresi et al., 2004; Benus, 2005; Benus and Gafos, 2007). However, instances of opacity are recorded in vowel harmony languages in which both vowels and consonants are opaque to vowel harmony and systematically block the harmonic feature from propagating further.
The low vowel /ɑ/ is a non-participatory vowel mainly in languages with 9 and 7 vowel systems resulting in an unpaired vowel and is opaque to vowel harmony (Archangeli and Pulleybank, 2003; Casali, 2003, 2008). The opacity of the [+low -ATR] vowel /ɑ/ stops the spreading of the harmonic feature from propagating further in many vowel harmony languages.
The explanation for the non-participation of the low vowel /ɑ/ is two-fold. First, Stewart (1971) and Hall and Creider (1998) suggest that since the vowel quality differences in the mid-central region of the vowel space are difficult to perceive, the low vowel /ɑ/ does not have a [+ATR] counterpart in many languages; secondly, Morton 2012 notes that “ in the words of Stewart (1971) and Archangeli and Pulleyblank (1994) there is articulatory difficulty in advancing the tongue root when the tongue body is low to produce a low [+ATR] vowel” (p. 71). Non- participation of /ɑ/ in the harmony system is attested mostly in est African languages e.g.
Wolof, Fula, Diola Fogni as reported in Hall et al. (1980). Non-participation of /ɑ/ in the harmony system is also attested in Assamese (Mahanta, 2007), for example50: mɔd hi
50 The Assamese examples referred in this chapter are taken from Mahanta (2007).
“drunkard”, pɛt ri “covered cane basket”. In the examples, the intervening low vowel /ɑ/ blocks the harmonic spreading, hence the [-ATR] vowels /ɔ/ and /ɛ/ are unaffected by the following [+ATR] vowels /i/ and /u/.
Apart from vowels blocking vowel harmony, consonants blocking vowel harmony is also attested in languages such as Madurese (Trigo, 1991), Shona (Uffman, 2006), Assamese (Mahanta, 2007) wherein an intervening consonant surface as a blocker which impedes the harmonic spreading. In Madurese, the voiceless obstruents and the nasals block harmony, e.g.
kʱɤman “weapon” Trigo, 1991 ; in Shona, in loan word phonology, vowel harmony spreads across labial and coronal consonants but not across sonorants, e.g. kiripi “clip”, aitemu “item”, kirabhu “club”, chifi “chief” (Uffman, 2006); and in Assamese, vowel harmony spreads across all intervening consonants except nasal consonants, e.g. mɔni ‘pearl’, khɔmir “leavening agent”, sɛkɔni “strainer” Mahanta, 2007 .
Nasal vowels blocking vowel harmony is attested in languages such as Ijesa and Ekiti (Przezdziecki, 2005) and Karajá (Ribeiro, 2002). In Ijesa and Ekiti, while pronouns with [+ATR] oral vowels alternate (for example: órígi ‘s/he saw a tree’, arígi ‘we saw a tree’ , pronouns with [-ATR] or nasal vowels do not alternate (for example: ɔ r lá ‘s/he saw okra’, ar lá ‘we saw okra’ . In Karaj nasal vowels /a /, /o /, and /ɛ / are opaque to vowel harmony prohibiting the regressive spreading of the [ATR] feature, e.g. rɛm re ‘I caught (it)’, rɛhãɖere ‘I hit (it)’.
With this general background on [ATR] harmony and the role of the intervening segments, we now proceed to discuss the vowel harmony pattern in Deori. At first, we will discuss the descriptive facts of vowel harmony in Deori in section 5.3, followed by theoretical implications of vowel harmony pattern in Deori in section 5.4.