Re: TERMS: going dotty, twice over (was: TERMS: Umlaut-Ablaut)

Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>
> No, not at all.  It is the vowel in the _root_ word which conditions all
> the vowels in the affixes (usually suffixes) in langs with vowel harmony.
>
> Umlaut is almost the opposite; the vowel of a suffix has modified the root
> vowel. The suffix then, of course, usually thinks it's done its job &
> disappears.
I thought you could call them simply forward or backward vowel harmony,
or something like that (like there is forward and backward assimilation).
But I guess the main difference is that vowel harmony involves the root
(while umlaut may modify non-root vowels too, can't it?).


--Pablo Flores
  http://draseleq.conlang.org/pablo-david/