On Finnic and Khanty vowel harmony: domains, slopes and their role in typology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33340/susa.95344Keywords:
vowel harmony, vacillation, typology, neutralityAbstract
The main purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the inaccuracies in the article by Paul Kiparsky and Karl Pajusalu (2003). Their influential study suggests a typological classification of vowel harmony based on mostly Finnic languages and their dialects which is claimed to be supported by a particular OT analysis. However, in many cases, their example languages and dialects are hardly classifiable into the category suggested by them. Moreover, their OT analysis completely ignores cases of variation (including vacillation) in the example languages. The present study deals with the data available for Estonian (Mulgi and Northeastern dialects), Veps and Khanty, and demonstrates – mostly based on the same sources referred to by Kiparsky and Pajusalu – that the actual patterns of harmony are considerably different from the patterns described in their article. It is emphasized that many patterns do not arise from the behavior of neutral vowels but instead, they can be results of the length and the nature of the harmonic domain. The paper also introduces the notion of harmonicity slope, according to which the domain has no strict borders and in which the tendency for the vowels to harmonize gradually diminishes.
References
Arukask, Madis (koostja ja toimetaja) 2016: Uurimusi vepsa rahvausust. Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum. URL: http://www.folklore.ee/rl/pubte/ee/sator/sator16/vepsa2016.pdf
Baković, Eric 2003. Vowel harmony and stem identity. San Diego Linguistic Papers 1. 1–42.
Benus, Stefan – Gafos, Adamantios I. 2007. Articulatory characteristics of Hungarian ‘transparent’ vowels. Journal of Phonetics 35(3). 271–300.
Blumenfeld, Lev – Toivonen, Ida 2016. A featural paradox in Votic harmony. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34(4). 1167–1180.
Comrie, Bernard 1981. The Languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge – London – New York – New Rochelle – Melbourne – Sydney: Cambridge University Press.
Comrie, Bernard 1998. General Features of the Uralic Languages. In: The Uralic Languages. Description, History and Foreign Influences. Edited by Sinor, Denis. Leiden – New York – København – Köln: E. J. Brill. 451–477.
Eerola, Jari 2012. Vepsäläiset lühüdpajot. Perusrakenteet, esityskäytännöt ja tyylillinen muutos. Akateeminen väitöskirja. Tampereen yliopisto. URL: https://trepo.tuni.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/67918/978-951-44-8998-3.pdf
Filchenko, Andrey Yury 2007. A Grammar of Eastern Khanty. A Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy. Houston, Texas.
Finley, Sarah 2008. Formal and cognitive restrictions on vowel harmony. A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Baltimore, Maryland
Finley, Sarah 2009. Locality Restrictions on Exceptions to Vowel Harmony. In Lehnert-LeHouillier, H. – Fine, A. B. (eds.). University of Rochester Working Papers in the Language Sciences. 5(1). 17–48.
Finley, Sarah 2010. Exceptions in vowel harmony are local. Lingua 120(6):1549–1566
Gulya, János 1966. Eastern Ostyak Chrestomathy. Bloomington – The Hague, The Netherlands: Indiana University – Mouton & Co.
Hakulinen et al. 2004 = Hakulinen, Auli – Vilkuna, Maria – Korhonen, Riitta – Koivisto, Vesa – Heinonen, Tarja Riitta – Alho, Irja: Iso suomen kielioppi. SKS:n toimituksia (SKST) 950. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur 2010. Consonant Harmony: Long-Distance Interactions in Phonology. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.
Hayes, Bruce – Cziráky Londe, Zsuzsa 2006. Stochastic phonological knowledge: the case of Hungarian vowel harmony. Phonology 23(1). 59–104.
Honti, László 1977: Beobachtungen über die Laut– und Formenlehre gegenwärtiger Surguter
Mundarten der Ostjakischen. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 27: 271–286.
Honti László 1978a: Tromagani osztják szövegek. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 80: 127–139.
Honti László 1978b: Szurguti osztják szójegyzék. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 80: 327–345.
Honti László 1984. Chrestomathia Ostiacica. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó.
Honti, László 1998. ObUgrian. In Abondolo, Daniel (ed.): The Uralic languages. Routledge: London – New York.
Honti László – Rusvai Júlia 1977: Pimi osztják szövegek. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 79: 223–232.
Barış Kabak 2011. Turkish Vowel Harmony. In The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Volume V. Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell. 2831–2854.
Barış Kabak – Kasselkus, – Maniwa, Kazumi – Silke Weber. Vowel harmony has direction and context: a corpus study. Paper presented at the 16th Manchester Phonology Meeting. 22–24 May 2008. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228827362_Vowel_harmony_has_direction_and_context_A_corpus_study
Ernestus, Mirjam – Baayen, R. Harald 2011. Corpora and Exemplars in Phonology. In: Goldsmith, John – Riggle, Jason – Yu, Alan C. L. (eds.) The Handbook of Phonological Theory. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. 374–400.
Karjalainen – Toivonen 1948 = K. F. Karjalainens Ostjakisches Wörterbuch. Bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Y. H. Toivonen. I–II. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
Kiparsky, Paul – Pajusalu, Karl 2003. Towards a typology of disharmony. The Linguistic Review 20: 214–241
Laakso, Johanna 2001. The Finnic languages. In The Circum-Baltic Languages. Typology and Contact. Edited by Östen Dahl and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 179–212.
Leduc, Marjorie – Reiss, Charles – Volenec, Veno (forthcoming). Votic vowel harmony in Substance Free Logical Phonology. In: The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony. Oxford University Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339603093_Votic_vowel_harmony_in_Substance_Free_Logical_Phonology (2 April 2020)
LGR 2015 = Leipzig Glossing Rules. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Last change: May 31, 2015. Downloaded April 4, 2020. https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php
Mullonen 2013 = Муллонен И. И.: Большие озера маленького народа: идентификация по размеру в вепсской топонимии. In: Вепсские ареальные исследования. Сборник статей. Науч. ред. Зайцева, Н. Г. – Мызников, С. А. Петрозаводск: Карельский научный центр РАН.
Nevins, Andrew 2010. Locality in Vowel Harmony. Cambridge, Massachusetts – London, England: The MIT Press.
Pajusalu, Karl 1998. Vowel reduction in South Estonian. Linguistica Uralica XXXIV(3): 234–240.
Polgárdi, Krisztina 2015. Typology of weak disharmony: Representations versus the frontness/backness scale. Theoretical Linguistics 41(1–2). 89–96.
Rebrus, Péter – Törkenczy, Miklós 2015a. Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony. Theoretical Linguistics 41(1–2):1–61
Rebrus, Péter – Törkenczy, Miklós 2015b. The monotonic behaviour of language patterns. Theoretical Linguistics 41(3–4). 241–268
Rebrus, Péter – Törkenczy, Miklós 2016. Types and degrees of vowel neutrality. Linguistica 56(1): 239–252.
Sal [Éva] 1976 = Шал, Э.: Фонетика обско-угорских языков. In: Основы финно-угорского языкознания. Марийский, пермские и угорские языки. Москва: Издательство «Наука».
Sauer, Gert 1984. Der Vokalismus des Südostjakischen Irtysh-Dialekts. In: Studien zur phonologischen Beschreibung uralischer Sprachen. Herausgeben von P. Hajdú und L. Honti. Bibliotheca Uralica 7. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 121–128.
Sipos Mária 1999: Osztják. In: A világ nyelvei. Főszerkesztő Fodor István. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 1135–1138.
Sipos Mária 2000. A hanti (osztják) nyelv. In: Nyelvrokonaink. Szerkesztette Nanovfszky György. Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány. 281–285.
Sipos, Mária 2004. The Khanty language. In: The Finno-Ugric World. Editor-in-Chief: György Nanovfszky. Budapest: Teleki László Foundation. 253–257.
Tanning, Salme 1961. Mulgi murdetekstid. Eesti murded I. Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus.
Tereshkin 1961 = Терешкин, Н. И. Очерки диалектов хантыйского языка. Часть первая. Ваховский диалект. Москва – Ленинград: Издательство Академии Наук СССР.
Tereshkin 1966 = Терешкин, Н. И. Хантыйский язык. In: Языки народов СССР. Том третий. Финно-угорские и самодийские языки. Москва: Издательство «Наука».
Tolskaya, Inna 2014. Oroch vowel harmony. Lingua 138, 128–151.
Törkenczy, Miklós – Rebrus, Péter – Szigetvári, Péter 2012. Dark secrets of Hungarian vowel harmony. In Cyran, Eugeniusz – Kardela, Henryk – Szymanek, Bogdan (eds.). Sound, Structure and Sense: Studies in memory of Edmund Gussmann. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL. 491–508.
Törkenczy, Miklós – Rebrus, Péter – Szigetvári, Péter 2013. Harmony that cannot be represented. In
Brandtler, Johan – Molnár, Valéria – Platzack, Christer (eds.). Approaches to Hungarian. Volume 13: Papers from the 2011 Lund Conference. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 229– 252.
Vértes, Edith 1969. Vokalharmonie und Vokalbestand im Südostjakischen. Finnish-Ugrische Forschungen 43: 1–70.
Vértes, Edith 1977. Morphematische Untersuchung der ostjakischen Vokalharmonie. Bibliotheca Uralica 2. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Vértes, Edith 1984. Antwort an G. Sauer. In: Studien zur phonologischen Beschreibung uralischer Sprachen. Herausgeben von P. Hajdú und L. Honti. Bibliotheca Uralica 7. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 129–150.
Vértes Edit [1985]. Vázlat a déli osztják kresztomátiához. Debrecen: Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem.
Vértes Edit 1999. Az osztják magánhangzó-illeszkedés felbomlásához (A XX. sz. elején a Jugán mentén). Magyar Nyelvjárások 36: 129–142.
VRS 2016 = Вепсско-русский словарь Санкт-петербургского вепсского общества. Словарь составляется по решению Отдела науки и образования СПб Вепсского общества с 2009 г. Версия β 1 от 3.2016 г. (св. 25 900 слов). Санкт-Петербург.
Wiik, Kalevi 1988: Viron vokaalisointu. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Baković, Eric 2003. Vowel harmony and stem identity. San Diego Linguistic Papers 1. 1–42.
Benus, Stefan – Gafos, Adamantios I. 2007. Articulatory characteristics of Hungarian ‘transparent’ vowels. Journal of Phonetics 35(3). 271–300.
Blumenfeld, Lev – Toivonen, Ida 2016. A featural paradox in Votic harmony. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34(4). 1167–1180.
Comrie, Bernard 1981. The Languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge – London – New York – New Rochelle – Melbourne – Sydney: Cambridge University Press.
Comrie, Bernard 1998. General Features of the Uralic Languages. In: The Uralic Languages. Description, History and Foreign Influences. Edited by Sinor, Denis. Leiden – New York – København – Köln: E. J. Brill. 451–477.
Eerola, Jari 2012. Vepsäläiset lühüdpajot. Perusrakenteet, esityskäytännöt ja tyylillinen muutos. Akateeminen väitöskirja. Tampereen yliopisto. URL: https://trepo.tuni.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/67918/978-951-44-8998-3.pdf
Filchenko, Andrey Yury 2007. A Grammar of Eastern Khanty. A Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy. Houston, Texas.
Finley, Sarah 2008. Formal and cognitive restrictions on vowel harmony. A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Baltimore, Maryland
Finley, Sarah 2009. Locality Restrictions on Exceptions to Vowel Harmony. In Lehnert-LeHouillier, H. – Fine, A. B. (eds.). University of Rochester Working Papers in the Language Sciences. 5(1). 17–48.
Finley, Sarah 2010. Exceptions in vowel harmony are local. Lingua 120(6):1549–1566
Gulya, János 1966. Eastern Ostyak Chrestomathy. Bloomington – The Hague, The Netherlands: Indiana University – Mouton & Co.
Hakulinen et al. 2004 = Hakulinen, Auli – Vilkuna, Maria – Korhonen, Riitta – Koivisto, Vesa – Heinonen, Tarja Riitta – Alho, Irja: Iso suomen kielioppi. SKS:n toimituksia (SKST) 950. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur 2010. Consonant Harmony: Long-Distance Interactions in Phonology. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.
Hayes, Bruce – Cziráky Londe, Zsuzsa 2006. Stochastic phonological knowledge: the case of Hungarian vowel harmony. Phonology 23(1). 59–104.
Honti, László 1977: Beobachtungen über die Laut– und Formenlehre gegenwärtiger Surguter
Mundarten der Ostjakischen. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 27: 271–286.
Honti László 1978a: Tromagani osztják szövegek. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 80: 127–139.
Honti László 1978b: Szurguti osztják szójegyzék. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 80: 327–345.
Honti László 1984. Chrestomathia Ostiacica. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó.
Honti, László 1998. ObUgrian. In Abondolo, Daniel (ed.): The Uralic languages. Routledge: London – New York.
Honti László – Rusvai Júlia 1977: Pimi osztják szövegek. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 79: 223–232.
Barış Kabak 2011. Turkish Vowel Harmony. In The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Volume V. Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell. 2831–2854.
Barış Kabak – Kasselkus, – Maniwa, Kazumi – Silke Weber. Vowel harmony has direction and context: a corpus study. Paper presented at the 16th Manchester Phonology Meeting. 22–24 May 2008. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228827362_Vowel_harmony_has_direction_and_context_A_corpus_study
Ernestus, Mirjam – Baayen, R. Harald 2011. Corpora and Exemplars in Phonology. In: Goldsmith, John – Riggle, Jason – Yu, Alan C. L. (eds.) The Handbook of Phonological Theory. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. 374–400.
Karjalainen – Toivonen 1948 = K. F. Karjalainens Ostjakisches Wörterbuch. Bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Y. H. Toivonen. I–II. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura.
Kiparsky, Paul – Pajusalu, Karl 2003. Towards a typology of disharmony. The Linguistic Review 20: 214–241
Laakso, Johanna 2001. The Finnic languages. In The Circum-Baltic Languages. Typology and Contact. Edited by Östen Dahl and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 179–212.
Leduc, Marjorie – Reiss, Charles – Volenec, Veno (forthcoming). Votic vowel harmony in Substance Free Logical Phonology. In: The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony. Oxford University Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339603093_Votic_vowel_harmony_in_Substance_Free_Logical_Phonology (2 April 2020)
LGR 2015 = Leipzig Glossing Rules. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Last change: May 31, 2015. Downloaded April 4, 2020. https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php
Mullonen 2013 = Муллонен И. И.: Большие озера маленького народа: идентификация по размеру в вепсской топонимии. In: Вепсские ареальные исследования. Сборник статей. Науч. ред. Зайцева, Н. Г. – Мызников, С. А. Петрозаводск: Карельский научный центр РАН.
Nevins, Andrew 2010. Locality in Vowel Harmony. Cambridge, Massachusetts – London, England: The MIT Press.
Pajusalu, Karl 1998. Vowel reduction in South Estonian. Linguistica Uralica XXXIV(3): 234–240.
Polgárdi, Krisztina 2015. Typology of weak disharmony: Representations versus the frontness/backness scale. Theoretical Linguistics 41(1–2). 89–96.
Rebrus, Péter – Törkenczy, Miklós 2015a. Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony. Theoretical Linguistics 41(1–2):1–61
Rebrus, Péter – Törkenczy, Miklós 2015b. The monotonic behaviour of language patterns. Theoretical Linguistics 41(3–4). 241–268
Rebrus, Péter – Törkenczy, Miklós 2016. Types and degrees of vowel neutrality. Linguistica 56(1): 239–252.
Sal [Éva] 1976 = Шал, Э.: Фонетика обско-угорских языков. In: Основы финно-угорского языкознания. Марийский, пермские и угорские языки. Москва: Издательство «Наука».
Sauer, Gert 1984. Der Vokalismus des Südostjakischen Irtysh-Dialekts. In: Studien zur phonologischen Beschreibung uralischer Sprachen. Herausgeben von P. Hajdú und L. Honti. Bibliotheca Uralica 7. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 121–128.
Sipos Mária 1999: Osztják. In: A világ nyelvei. Főszerkesztő Fodor István. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 1135–1138.
Sipos Mária 2000. A hanti (osztják) nyelv. In: Nyelvrokonaink. Szerkesztette Nanovfszky György. Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány. 281–285.
Sipos, Mária 2004. The Khanty language. In: The Finno-Ugric World. Editor-in-Chief: György Nanovfszky. Budapest: Teleki László Foundation. 253–257.
Tanning, Salme 1961. Mulgi murdetekstid. Eesti murded I. Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus.
Tereshkin 1961 = Терешкин, Н. И. Очерки диалектов хантыйского языка. Часть первая. Ваховский диалект. Москва – Ленинград: Издательство Академии Наук СССР.
Tereshkin 1966 = Терешкин, Н. И. Хантыйский язык. In: Языки народов СССР. Том третий. Финно-угорские и самодийские языки. Москва: Издательство «Наука».
Tolskaya, Inna 2014. Oroch vowel harmony. Lingua 138, 128–151.
Törkenczy, Miklós – Rebrus, Péter – Szigetvári, Péter 2012. Dark secrets of Hungarian vowel harmony. In Cyran, Eugeniusz – Kardela, Henryk – Szymanek, Bogdan (eds.). Sound, Structure and Sense: Studies in memory of Edmund Gussmann. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL. 491–508.
Törkenczy, Miklós – Rebrus, Péter – Szigetvári, Péter 2013. Harmony that cannot be represented. In
Brandtler, Johan – Molnár, Valéria – Platzack, Christer (eds.). Approaches to Hungarian. Volume 13: Papers from the 2011 Lund Conference. Amsterdam – Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 229– 252.
Vértes, Edith 1969. Vokalharmonie und Vokalbestand im Südostjakischen. Finnish-Ugrische Forschungen 43: 1–70.
Vértes, Edith 1977. Morphematische Untersuchung der ostjakischen Vokalharmonie. Bibliotheca Uralica 2. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Vértes, Edith 1984. Antwort an G. Sauer. In: Studien zur phonologischen Beschreibung uralischer Sprachen. Herausgeben von P. Hajdú und L. Honti. Bibliotheca Uralica 7. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 129–150.
Vértes Edit [1985]. Vázlat a déli osztják kresztomátiához. Debrecen: Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem.
Vértes Edit 1999. Az osztják magánhangzó-illeszkedés felbomlásához (A XX. sz. elején a Jugán mentén). Magyar Nyelvjárások 36: 129–142.
VRS 2016 = Вепсско-русский словарь Санкт-петербургского вепсского общества. Словарь составляется по решению Отдела науки и образования СПб Вепсского общества с 2009 г. Версия β 1 от 3.2016 г. (св. 25 900 слов). Санкт-Петербург.
Wiik, Kalevi 1988: Viron vokaalisointu. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Downloads
Published
2021-12-01
How to Cite
Fejes, L. (2021). On Finnic and Khanty vowel harmony: domains, slopes and their role in typology . Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Aikakauskirja, 2021(98), 113–148. https://doi.org/10.33340/susa.95344
Issue
Section
Articles
