Finnish Vowel Harmony and Disharmony

7/28/2019 Finnish Vowel Harmony and Disharmony

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Paulo Chagas de Souza

DL-FFLCH-USP

[email protected]

IV Seminrio Internacional de Fonologia PUCRS - 2012
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Finnish Vowel Harmony

only back vowels: talohouse, apuhelp, tulo

arrival only front vowels: elinanimal, tyttgirl,pyt

table

Words such as the following are impossible:

* tal, * tlo, * apy, * pu, * tytto, * tutt, * pyta,* pout


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Finnish Vowels

round + round round + round

i y u + high low

e o high low

high + low

- back + back


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Vowel (dis)harmony

Tab. 2. Balto-Fennic languages and dialects and Estonian dialects(Kiparsky & Pajusalu 2003).

Lgg./dial Estonian Initial syllables Non-init.syll. Alternations

E. Votic N. Seto u o a i e u o a i e u~, o~, a~, e~

Votic di. S. Seto u o a i e u o a i e u~, a~, e~

Finnish N.E. u o a i e u o a i e u~, o~, a~

W. Votic N. Tarto u o a i e u o a i e a~, e~

En.Veps S.W. u o a i e u a i e u~, a~

Veps di. West. u o a i e u a i e a~

Livonian North. u o a i e u a i e


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Finnish data Extended paradigms:

hirtt.o hanging hirtt. to hang

itk.u weeping itke. to weep

kiilt.o gloss kiilt. to shine kiit.os thanks kiitt. to thank

lent.o flight lent. to fly

men.o going men.n to go

kest.o length, duration kest. to take, last

heitt.o (a) throw heitt. to throw keitt.o soup, boiling keitt. to boil, cook

tiet.o knowledge tied. to know

kiert.o circuit kiert. to turn, twist

pes.u washing pes.t to wash


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Finnish data Cf. words with contrastive front vowels in the first syllable.

kylv. semeadura kylv. semear

kytt. use kytt. to use

knn.s turn knt. to turn (vt)

Not confined to verbs and nominalizations:

piirr.os drawing piirt.o stroke

piirt.uri recorder, plotter piirt. draw

mets forest mets.uri forest worker

tyhm stupid tyhm.yri fool

Nouns without derivatives:

kello watch, clock pelto field

lehto grove hius hair


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Personal pronouns

Paradigms of personal pronouns min I and sinyou (sg.):

NOM min sin

GEN minun sinun ACC minut sinut

PART minua sinua

INESS minussa sinussa


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Number of syllables Dependance on the number of syllables preceding a round vowel. ilm.oittaa to report, inform ilm.i phenomenon

keitt.o soup keitt.i kitchen

kesk.us center, middle kesk.i center, core

kasvi plant kasvi.o flora

nimi name nimi.st nomenclature

nime.nt nominative

lehti leaf lehdi.st foliage; press

hammas tooth hampa.isto set of teeth

maa land maa.sto terrain

saari island saari.sto archipelago

ihmettel. to wonder ihmettel.y wonder

hihitt. to giggle hihit.ys giggle

OBS: there arent any roots (or any morphemes) that enforce disharmony.


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Neutrality, symmetry the so-called neutral vowels are not strictly speaking neutral. words having only [i] and [e] in the root always take front inflectional affixes.

E.g.:viini viiniwine; tie, tietroad, way; tiedto know; menn to go.

moral: no instance of a neutral vowel in the first syllable of a root is neutral atall.

as Archangeli & Pulleyblank (1994) point out, VH systems rarely if ever show aperfect, canonical pattern of harmony. VH languages always exhibit voweldisharmony in some contexts. Some go as far as to prefer disharmony in somecontexts even though their inventories makes VH possible in those contexts.

Kiparsky & Pajusalu (2003) discusses this and proposes a typology of VH anddisharmony. But, it is not fine-tuned enough and does not consider paradigms.

disharmony preferred in some contexts: focus of Chagas de Souza (2002a,b).

Finnish facts: a distinction has to be made between front round vowels (, )and the low front vowel (). K&P allude to this possibility, but dont explore it.In fact, all the analysis they make takes no account of this difference.


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Marked vs. unmarked this difference emerges with disyllabic stems. Examples of this difference:

after a neutral vowel in the first syllable, both [a] and [] are possible in thestem, as shown bysin you (sg.) andviitta cloak

after a neutral vowel in the first syllable, surprisingly there is a marked

preference for [o, u] over [, y], so that forms like eno uncle and mehu,juice, are extremely more common than forms like levyrecord, which arevery hard to come by.

the preference cuts across distinctions such as adjectives vs. nouns (e.g. isolarge, heikko weak, and kirkko church, hermo nerve), or primitive nounsvs. nominalizations (pelto field vs. lento flight)

generalization: both disyllabic stems and root+suffix stems with two syllableswith a neutral vowel in the 1st syllable strongly prefer disharmony to harmony.


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Licensing

Harris refers to Kaye (1990): Phonological Licensing Principle: Within adomain, all phonological units must be licensed save one, the head of thatdomain.

Gussmann (2007: 225-6): In a clear sense, the final empty nucleus is a weakerlicensor than both a full vowel and an empty nucleus at the left edge of theword.

Harris (1997: 339): I will argue that distributional imbalances can beaccounted for by positing an intimate connection between the melodic andprosodic aspects of licensing: the ability of a position to support melodic

contrasts depends crucially on its place in the prosodic hierarchy.


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Attraction

Attraction: similar to licensing? Reducible to it?

Mohanan (1993): fields of attraction are segment-internal and cross-segmentalrequirements, which may be viewed as the centers of these fields of attraction,

or the states to which linguistics systems are attracted. Burzio (2002): The overall structure of a word w (in both its phonological and

semantic components) is influenced by that of other words in the lexicon towhich wis independently similar, and which can be thought of as attractors ofw.


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Markedness & attraction Degrees of attraction: weak and strong.

Strength of vowels in Finnish:

Strong: a o u y

Weak: i e

Cross-classified according to markedness:

Marked: y Unmarked: i e u o a

Tab. 4. Vowels in Finnish.

a e i o u

strong attractor + + + + + +marked (wrt pal) + +


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Syntagmatic + paradigmatic Syntagmatic & paradigmatic characteristics of segments interact.

Syntagmatic side: licensing.

Paradigmatic side (only?): attraction.

Focussing on Finnish

Positional indirect licensing enough for weak attractors (i, e) to act onunmarked vowels ().

Positional indirect licensing not enough for weak attractors (i, e) to act onmarked vowels (, ).

Hierarquical indirect licensing enough for weak attractors (i, e) to act onmarked vowels (, ).


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Summary Focussing on Finnish Weak attractors by themselves license unmarked vowels.

Weak attractors only license marked vowels at the level of the foot.

Tab. 5. Interaction of markedness-resistance and attraction.

Strong attractors. Enough to establish contrasts. Dont need higher prosodiclevels to be effecive.

Weak attractors. May produce allophony. May only be effective cumulatively orat a higher prosodic level.

Weak resistance Strong resistance

Strong PositionStrong attractor enough enough

Weak attractor enough not enough

Weak PositionStrong attractor enough enough

Weak attractor not enough not enough


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References Burzio, Luigi (2002). Missing Players: Phonology and the Past-Tense Debate,

in Lingua 112: 157-199.

Goldsmith, John (1990).Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. Oxford:Blackwell.

Harris, John (1997). Licensing Inheritance: An Integrated Theory ofNeutralisation, in Phonology 14: 315-370.

Karlsson, Fred (1982). Suomen Kielen: nne- ja Muotorakenne. Porvoo:Werner Sderstrm.

Kiparsky, Paul & Karl Pajusalu (2003). Towards a Typology of Disharmony, inThe Linguistic Review 20: 217-241.

Krmer, Martin (2001). Vowel Harmony and Correspondence Theory.Dsseldorf, Heinrich Heine Universitt: Tese de Doutorado.

Mohanan, K. P. (1993). Fields of Attraction in Phonology, in Goldsmith, J.(ed.). The Last Phonological Rule pp. 61-116. Univ. of Chicago Press.

Finnish Vowel Harmony and Disharmony

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