1969/03/01 by Bruce Rigsby, Michael Silverstein · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Linguistics and language evolution #Ancient Near East History #Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis #Vowel harmony #Vowel #Linguistics #Mid vowel #Harmony (color) #Art #Philosophy #Formant
paper · doi:10.2307/411752
openalex publication_date 1969/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Vowel harmony in Sahaptian languages is an automatic assimilation of phonemes of a ‘recessive’ set to those of a ‘dominant’ one in the same sequence. It is describable with phonetic features of phonological segments, as opposed to class markings on whole morphemes. In fact, in the Sahaptin dialects, explaining palatalization of front velars requires setting up a preceding phonetic rule of vowel harmony, and different late rules of vowel merging. Historically, we can view the vowel harmony as a phonetic process arising in the dialects by parallel (but not identical) restructuring from a Proto-Sahaptian system of morphological ablaut.