Chapter 7. Comparative consequences of the tongue root harmony analysis for proto-Tungusic, proto-Mongolic, and proto-Korean

Seongyeon Ko · John B. Whitman

111 citations0/0 files storedStudies in language companion series

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Linguistics and language evolution Phonetics and Phonology Research Linguistics and Cultural Studies

Abstract

This paper examines the role of retracted tongue root ([RTR]) harmony in Northeast Asian areal and genetic relationships. Recent research has suggested that at least three of the families grouped together as Altaic by Poppe (1960) – Korean, Mongolic, and Tungusic (KMT) – should be reconstructed with [RTR] vowel harmony. In this paper we reinforce this conclusion, arguing specifically against proposals that [RTR] harmony is secondary, or that [ATR] is the dominant feature. We also argue against the proposal of Starostin et al. (2003) that specific proto-families such as proto-Tungusic should be reconstructed without vowel harmony. We then compare the status of [RTR] harmony in Northeast Asia to the status of tongue root harmony in the Central Sudanic Zone, extending our discussion to the vowel harmony found in Chukchi, Yukaghir, Nivkh, and Ainu. We discuss whether KMT-style [RTR] harmony should be viewed as an innovation or a retention, and examine the particular issue of the Korean vowel inventory.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 111 citations exist upstream.

References

1997The Sounds of the World's Languages 1999Japanese/Korean linguistics, vol. 5. Ed. by Noriko Akatsuka, Shoichi Iwasaki, and Susan Strauss. Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1996. Pp. xii, 446.2009The Contrastive Hierarchy in Phonology 2001Areal Diffusion versus Genetic Inheritance: An African Perspective 2007Africa as a phonological area 2003A Grammar of Kolyma Yukaghir 2011A History of the Korean Language 2007A Linguistic Geography of Africa

Cited by

2017On the diachronic origin of Nivkh height restrictions 2018Grammaticalization and typology in Australian Aboriginal languages 2018Grammaticalization in isolating languages and the notion of complexity 2015Causative constructions in Ainu: A typological perspective with remarks on the diachrony 2018Revisiting the anasynthetic spiral 2017The Transeurasian Languages

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.