Vowel harmony in languages of India

By Adjunct Professor of Linguistics Nancy A Ritter (Editor), Professor of Linguistics Harry Van Der Hulst (Editor), Shakuntala Mahanta (Chapter), Dr. Paul Arsenault (Chapter)
View profile for: Dr. Paul Arsenault

This chapter presents a survey of vowel harmony (VH) in languages of India, focusing on examples from the Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, and Dravidian families, along with the isolate Burushaski. It sketches the typological properties of harmony, while also drawing generalizations about language families. The survey covers well-known case studies like Assamese, Bengali, and Telugu, but also lesser-known examples. It reveals that VH systems are primarily regressive in India. Common types of VH in the region include height, tongue-root, laxing, and palatal harmony. In tongue-root harmony systems, [+ATR] vowels are dominant, [−ATR] vowels are recessive, and [ɑ] is an opaque blocker. Other blocking effects are attributed to intervening coda consonants, nasals, and stress. The domain of harmony is most often the inflected word. In sum, the survey presents an overview of VH in India based on research to date while also highlighting outstanding issues that might guide future investigations.

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This is a peer reviewed Chapter

Chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony
Pages: 712-722
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2024
ISBN/ISSN: 9780198826804.013.56


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