Transparency, locality, and contrast in Uyghur backness harmony

Abstract

Theories of vowel harmony have wrestled with the formal challenges of transparency, notably the increased expressivity resulting from non-local dependencies. However, experimental work has demonstrated on a number of occasions that 'transparent' vowels actually undergo harmony (e.g., Gick, Pulleyblank, Campbell, & Mutaka, 2006), re-establishing the role of locality in the analysis of harmony. Existing work on backness harmony in Uyghur argues that /i/ is transparent to harmony, with some proposing that this falls out from the absence of contrastive /ɯ/ in the language (e.g., Vaux, 2000). This paper examines the distribution of surface [i] and [ɯ] within roots and suffixes to assess their phonological status, as well as their participation in harmony. Results support the case that there are no long-distance dependencies in Uyghur, suggesting that harmony is truly local in the language. Results for root-internal [i] and [ɯ] are less clear; evidence from most speakers supports an allophonic relationship, while some evidence for other speakers suggests the possibility of contrastive /i/ and /ɯ/.

Are neutral roots in Uyghur really neutral? Evaluating a covert phonemic contrast

“…The results of this experimental study suggest that the tendency for a root to take front or back suffixes does not correlate with the phonetic backness of its final vowel. This mirrors the results for Hungarian found in Blaho & Szeredi (2013), and also corroborates the results for Uyghur in McCollum (2021). As well, the presence of a harmonizing suffix does not exert a significant coarticulatory effect on the realization of rootfinal neutral vowels, suggesting that acoustic evidence from suffixed forms may not be sufficient to support a covert contrast analysis.…”

“…The study in McCollum (2021) investigates only six roots elicited from nine speakers: /ÙiS/ 'tooth', /ilim/ 'knowledge', /jil/ 'year', /qiS/ 'winter', /pil/ 'elephant', and /Silim/ 'glue'. This paper will examine the acoustic properties of transparent vowels using a larger number of roots and speakers.…”

The phonology of Atchan

“…Such a system is not predicted to exist by current analyses of bounded spreading patterns (e.g. Jurgec, 2011; McCollum, 2021). The Atchan cross‐morpheme nasalisation patterns described here have the potential to inform our understanding of feature spreading patterns in general.…”

Disentangling Words, Clitics, and Suffixes in Uyghur

“…Second, /i/ is transparent to harmony: it does not impose its own harmonic value on following material, but allows preceding harmonic material to "pass through" it (e.g., taksi-da/*taksi-de ("taxi-LOC")). For more discussion of the transparency of /i/ to harmony in Uyghur, see Mayer et al (2022ab);McCollum (2021).…”