Vowel Harmony in Tuvan and Igbo: Statistical and Optimality Theoretic Analyses
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2011
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
All languages have certain restrictions on what sounds are permitted, both in
general and in combination with other sounds. A particular kind of constraint, vowel
harmony, occurs in languages where the vowels within a word all belong to the same
class ([±round], [±back], [±high], etc.), beyond the amount expected by statistical chance.
Such languages are characterized by heavy affixation, wherein the vowels are
underspecified and can change to suit the environment as needed. Like any pattern,
however, there are exceptions. My goal in this thesis is to analyze two languages, Tuvan
and Igbo, with respect to their systems of vowel harmony, and explore the ways that
disharmony arises and is dealt with.
I start by outlining what vowel harmony is, what languages employ it, and what
factors encourage and discourage its existence. In Section 2, I introduce Tuvan and
provide a description of its phonology and morphology systems, as well as examples of
disharmony, and Igbo receives the same treatment in Section 3. I compare and contrast
the harmony levels of each language with Turkish, Japanese, and one another through
statistical analysis of text corpora in Sections 4 through 7, and in Sections 8 through 10 I
frame the results using constraints and Optimality Theory. I conclude with some musings
on what the results could mean for our understanding of vowel harmony and the
cognitive and learnability implications therein.