16 of harmony. The following section §1.4.3 briefly reviews the history of the ongoing
debate concerning how to characterize these different types of vowel systems and the features and feature geometries which are involved in vowel harmony alternations.
1.4.3 Vowel height and tongue root features
There is a large body of literature on the topic of vowel features as they relate to vowel harmony along the heightATR continuum. Stewart 1967 is some of the earliest work
which acknowledged the inadequacy of analyzing nine-vowel cross-height harmony systems i.e. as in 6a above as simply a sort of “raising” or “height” phenomena. It
became clear that a feature other than tongue height was at work, since it was operating at multiple height levels. Articulatory phonetic evidence by Pike 1947 and X-ray images
by Ladefoged 1964 strengthened the idea that vowel harmony in languages like Akan was the result of movement of the tongue root, not just the tongue body. Other important
early work on the subject is by Pike 1967 and Lindau 1978; 1979. Now, nearly half of a century since influential articles by Stewart and Pike, the
presence of [ATR] harmony in nine- and ten-vowel African languages is well- established, but debate continues concerning the nature of harmony processes in seven-
vowel systems. The more recent controversy mostly surrounds height vs. [ATR] analyses of these systems, with some e.g. Clements 1991, Parkinson 1996, Goad 1993 arguing
that height features alone may be enough to account for many types of harmony, so tongue root features should not be invoked for seven-vowel systems.
Languages with seven vowels i.e. those with inventories as in 6b and 6c above have variously been analyzed as exhibiting [+ATR] harmony, [-ATR] or [rtr]
17 harmony, and various types of height harmony.
10
Many e.g. Goad 1993, Bakovic 2000, van der Hulst 1988 and van der Hulst and van der Weijer 1985 propose that [-ATR]
harmony does not even exist, and all apparent instances of [-ATR] dominance and spreading can be attributed to [low] harmony.
11
Probably the most well-known case of [-ATR] dominance is in Yoruba, as classically described by Archangeli Pulleyblank
1989. Yoruba has the inventory i e a o u, and [-ATR] spreads leftward from the vowels . Goad 1993 disagrees with Archangeli Pulleyblank’s 1989 analysis and
suggests that Yoruba is in fact a case of [low] harmony, based on her proposal of a new type of vowel height geometry in which a are all considered [low]. She claims, in
fact, that “There are no convincing cases of [-atr] vowel harmony” 1993:23. However, Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994 demonstrate that Goad’s [low] analysis does not hold
up, especially in light of the variation attested by other dialects of Yoruba.
12
Leitch 1997 provides yet more strong evidence for the existence of harmony based on the feature [-ATR], since the patterns in twenty Bantu C languages which he
10
We must consider whether or not all three of these harmony types even exist. Casali’s work on inventory-dependent vowel harmony mentioned above offers a helpful way to tease apart some of the
confusion. As previously mentioned, languages with [ATR] contrasts in the high vowels e.g. Kinande generally have [+ATR] as the dominant value, whereas languages with [ATR] contrasts in the mid vowels
only e.g. Yoruba and much of Bantu C tend to have [-ATR] as the dominant value. The question still remains, however, whether or not there are harmony patterns which could not easily be analyzed in terms
of either [+ATR] or [-ATR], for which we would need to rely on some sort of height harmony as well. Kuria harmony is a prime example of a language whose harmony patterns might be best explained in terms
of height, or else a combination of height and [ATR]. This is an interesting issue which is very relevant to the analysis of many Bantu vowel systems but is only briefly addressed in this thesis. See §7.3.1 for a brief
review of Kuria height harmony. See also Parkinson 1996, Chacha and Odden 1998 and Cammenga 2004 for various analyses of Kuria vowel harmony.
11
Unless otherwise noted, I use [-ATR] and [rtr] synonymously. By default I will refer to [-ATR] vowels and systems, but I do not intend to crucially rely on assumptions based on a particular feature geometry.
12
Though Yoruba is the most well-known example of this type of system, in Casali’s 2003 survey of African vowel inventory types, he lists a number of languages from African language families which have
the 7VM system, which strongly correlates with [-ATR] dominant harmony patterns. There are a number of Bantu languages with this inventory, most of which are Bantu C languages spoken in Congo see Leitch
1997. Aside from that group, other Bantu languages known to have this inventory are Komo D23, Bhele D31 and Akoose A15. Kwa languages with this inventory are Anufo, Attie, Dangme, Ewe, Ga, and
Maxi. There are also several Defoid languages, all of which are dialects of Yoruba. For more about these languages and this inventory type, see Casali 2003 and references therein.
18 describes are incompatible with a [low] harmony analysis. All of the languages in his
study have the same seven-vowel i e a o u system with [-ATR], or as he calls it, [rtr] dominance. He claims that Goad’s 1993 proposal of the existence of [low] harmony
alone is not sufficient to straightforwardly account for the harmony patterns displayed in these languages, but that the features [low] and [rtr] are both needed. His argument
against Goad is largely based on the fact that [a] does not pattern with the vowels [ ] in triggering harmony. He summarizes “if [a] has the harmonic feature [i.e. the feature
[low] – HH] by virtue of the representation, then why does [a] never induce harmony?” 1996 245. With a featural representation such as Goad’s in which the distinction
between [ ] and [eo] is the same feature which defines [a] as a low vowel, the Bantu C patterns could not be accounted for. Based on this evidence from Leitch 1997 and
Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994, among others, I assume that a feature such as [-ATR] or [rtr] does in fact exist and can be the dominant value in a vowel system.
Theoretical work on height harmony has often included analyses of Bantu languages, particularly on vowel alternations in verbal suffixes such as the applicative
suffix. Work on height harmony is often presented as an alternative to tongue root harmony analyses. For example, as already mentioned, Goad 1993 argues for the
feature [low] instead of [-ATR] to account for Yoruba-type harmony. Some also have proposed height harmony analyses in place of [+ATR] harmony, particularly for 7V
systems. For example Clements 1990; 1991 argues that the hierarchical height feature [open] is sufficient to account for all “height-related” harmony, that is, all harmonies
along the auditory height continuum. Parkinson 1996 argues for a vowel height representation similar to that of Clements, though he allows for [ATR] as well, but only
19 in cases of clear cross-height harmony such as that in Akan and other 9V and 10V
languages. In this thesis I follow Casali 2003; 2008 and others in assuming that both
[+ATR] and [-ATR] dominance are attested, and as mentioned in §1.4.2 above, as well as §7.1 below, the existence of these types of dominance is largely predictable from the
inventory. The existence of height harmony as opposed to tongue root harmony is not an issue which I directly address. I recognize that there are other types of systems e.g.
Ikoma’s neighbors Kuria and Simbiti which might be best explained in terms of total height harmony. Therefore, I allow for the possibility that both height and tongue root
features could be involved in harmony systems.
1.5 Preview of the results
