LING444 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Consonant Harmony, Vowel Harmony, Vocal Tract

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING444
• Professor: Vainikka

Document Summary

Vowel harmony: the vowels in a word are similar (share features) -- common in languages of the world. Consonant harmony: the consonants in the word are similar (share features) -- rare in adult languages. Assimilation: adjacent segments end up sharing features. Harmony: non-adjacent segments end up sharing features. Consonants assimilate" partially or totally -- but they need not be adjacent. Can be seen as a type of simplification -- since features are shared, the total number of features represented in the word is reduced. Could be a matter of biological maturation, or a matter of ug giving this as a starting point. Nasals: /m/ and /n/ produced, not not /ng/ Some assimilation of consonants; voicing not stable. A. innateness that is relevant for general cognition, or functions other than language. The perception of linguistic sounds and their categorization are adult-like (ls) Connecting auditory and articulatory information (intermodal connection) (ls)