Effects of harmony on reduction in Kera

Abstract

The reduction of vowels is a popular topic for research, but little has been said about the effects of vowel harmony on vowel reduction. Gendrot and Adda-Decker (2006, 2007) claim that phonetic reduction is linked to the phonetic duration of the vowel so that in short syllables, the vowel converges towards a schwa-like quality. I support this claim in general, but I add the claim that reduction is blocked in vowel harmony domains. Within a harmony domain, even in vowels of short duration, the quality of the vowel retains the quality of the feature which is spreading. This paper demonstrates this with data from Kera, a Chadic language spoken in Chad. I examine fronting, rounding, and height harmony in Kera and confirm the fact that harmony (but not accidental agreement) in some way blocks the reduction. This has implications for the role of harmony and claims concerning privative features. Keywords: phonology; reduction; Kera; vowel harmony; acoustic; formants; duration; blocking; privative

Moro vowel harmony: implications for transparency and representations

“…The Gaahmg system resembles Moro, except that the raised [ɜ] is consistently mid in Moro, and the Moro mid vowels are mid-close [e] and [o]. Kera also has six vowels, /i ɨ u ε a ɔ/, a similar system to Gaahmg, but Pearce (2003) characterises its raising pattern as height harmony rather than ATR. An acoustic analysis, however, shows that the F1 of [ɨ] is similar to the mid vowels [e] and [o], whereas [ə], which is the result of raising /a/, has a lower F1, approaching that of [i] and [u].…”

“…An acoustic analysis, however, shows that the F1 of [ɨ] is similar to the mid vowels [e] and [o], whereas [ə], which is the result of raising /a/, has a lower F1, approaching that of [i] and [u]. Pearce remarks (2003: 6) that ‘we are using these symbols because in my analysis, [ɨ] acts as a high vowel but [ə] does not’. This means that the raising pattern is very similar to Moro, but Pearce chooses to analyse the central vowel as a high vowel phonologically and transcribe it as such, even though it has higher F1 than [ə].…”

Vowel harmony and positional variation in Kyrgyz

“…If vowel harmony renders certain vowels more predictable, in turn these vowels may be more reduced. However, if vowel reduction is large enough, the effect of harmony can be obscured, the very point made in Pearce (2008Pearce ( , 2012, and even lost over time. Binnick (1991) argues that the result of harmony, i.e., predictability, sows the seeds for the eventual decay of the pattern.…”

“…Returning to Pearce (2008Pearce ( , 2012 and the claim that harmony produces triggers and targets that are phonetically indistinguishable, it is clear that F2 varies significantly by position in Kyrgyz. Underlying Pearce's (2008Pearce's ( , 2012 claim that harmony blocks reduction is an assumption that the substitution of phonological symbols exerts a limiting force on phonetic variation. Under this view though, the results reported in the previous section are unexpected.…”