Re: Koryak Vowel harmony (was Re: DECAL: Examples #2: Phonotactics)

Hi,

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> Ah, Chukotko-Kamchatkan vowel harmony!
First of all, I beg your pardon for messing the things up both in
explanation and in examples. I should have always consulted the sources
before posting.

> It's not all that evil, it's a "dominant-recessive" system.
> One set of vowels, namely the low ones, is dominant above the other.
> If *one* morpheme contains the low vowels, the vowels in *all*
> morphemes get lowered.  No matter if the morpheme with the low
> vowels is the root or not!  Only if all morphemes have underlying
> high vowels, these actually surface as high vowels.  At least,
> that is how I understand what I have read about it.
Yes, I think your explanation makes sense. When I said "evil", I meant that
I found such alterations in root morphemes rather unpleasant for my current
project to be included in, for aesthetical reasons. As for "alterations", I
merely quoted (or, bettersay, misquoted) the grammar sketch of Koryak by Dr.
Zhukova I found on www.philology.ru (in Russian).

Indeed, those are /e/, /a/ and /o/, that are "strong" ("low" in your terms),
while /i/, */E/ and /u/ are "weak". We have a similar set of vowels in
Ojibwee, don't we? Does it have the same type of vowel harmony?

Dr. Zhukova gives the following examples (_y_ stands for [@], µ for [N] -
translit is mine), morpheme boundaries hyphened:
_nute-k_ 'in tundra' : _nota-µko_ 'from tundra';
_miml-e_ 'water.Instr' : _meml-etyµ_ 'to water';
_iw-i_ 'he said' : _ew-laj_ 'they said';
_titi-te_ 'needle.Instr' : _wala-ta_ 'knife.Instr';
_nyvyl-i_ 'he stopped.vi' : _vetat-e_ 'he worked';
_hig-u_ 'wolves' : _memyl-o_ 'seals'.

> Greenberg surely was a brilliant typologist, but his contributions
> to historical linguistics are dubious.
Historical linguistics is always dubious ;)

> something Samuel Johnson would have called
> "milking the bull"
Hehe. I like this phrase!

-- Yitzik

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