Is There a Right-to-Left Bias in Vowel Harmony? 1

Abstract

Despite decades of scholarship, and a steady stream of important theoretical and descriptive studies, our understanding of the phenomenon of vowel harmony remains only partial. Among the questions which still confront phonologists are the following: (i) Questions of synchrony: What is vowel harmony (VH)? How do we know it when we see it? Is VH the same as or different from processes identified as “umlaut”, “metaphony ” or “vowel assimilation”? What is possible vs. not possible? What vowel features can vs. cannot harmonize? Can VH be both bounded and unbounded? What are the constraints on triggers and targets of VH? Is the directionality of VH predictable? What are the possible domains of VH: stem, word, phrase? What can be a “neutral ” vowel in VH systems? How do we implement VH? Among the proposals: feature copying, spreading, government, licensing, metrical trees/grids, dependencies, alignment, agreement, no disagreement etc.

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