The following examples in (55) give English loanwords in AA that show two types of vowel harmony. (55) a. Rounding harmony 1. Underlying vowels AA realisation Gloss ʔukoordyun ‗accordion‘ kulustrool ‗cholesterol‘
ʔugzust ~ ʔigzust ‗exhaust‘
munhul ‗manhole‘
rumoot ~ rimoot ‗remote control‘
sunsur ‗sensor‘
2. Epenthetic vowels
dubul ‗double‘
fulumaastar ‗flow master‘
fulukloor ‗folklore‘
ʔubtukus ‗optics‘
b. Guttural harmony 1. Underlying vowels
136 ʔantarnitt ‗internet‘ manakiir ‗manicure‘ manavult ‗manifold‘ 2. Epenthetic vowels kafayiin ‗caffeine‘ karafoot ‗grapefruit‘ salamun ‗salmon‘ c. Default vowel ʔikistra ‗extra‘ bankiryaas ‗pancreas‘ biksil ‗pixel‘ sikraab ‗scrap‘
Harmony cases above show that harmony does not only apply to epenthetic vowels, but also to underlying vowels. Harmony in (55a1) and (55b1) affects underlying vowels while in (55a2) and (55b2) it targets epenthetic vowels. The examples in (55c) provide further evidence that the default epenthetic vowel in AA is the short high front vowel [i]. As I have indicated above, native AA words have only rounding harmony; harmony that involves the guttural vowel [a] has not been reported. This makes the examples in (55b) particularly interesting for the study of vowel harmony in AA.
The following subsection attempts to give answers to the following questions. 1. What are harmony triggers in AA?
2. What are harmony targets in AA?
3. What is the domain of vowel harmony in AA? 4. What is the directionality of vowel harmony in AA? 5. What factors motivate vowel harmony in AA?
137 3.2.7.4.2.1 Harmony triggers
Harmony triggers are restricted to two sets of vowels in AA: round and guttural vowels. For rounding 58 harmony the triggers are the English long vowels /ɔː/ and /u:/, the diphthongs /əʊ/ and /ʊə/ and the short vowel /ɒ/. All these source vowels are realised in AA as either the short vowel [u] or its long counterpart [uu]. All these vowels share the feature [round], so we can safely postulate that the spreading feature is [round]. However, harmony is sometimes triggered by spelling such that a loanword is adapted into AA according to its spelling as a round vowel that in turn triggers rounding harmony. This is the case for seven cases, including ‗double‘ and ‗sensor‘.
For guttural harmony,59 the trigger is always the adapted low front vowel in AA regardless of its source vowel in English. That is, the source vowel is realised as /a/ in AA and I believe that it is the adapted vowel /a/ that induces harmony. This vowel, [a], results from the mapping of English /a/, as in saramiik ‗ceramic‘; of schwa, as in ʔantarnit ‗internet‘; of the long low vowel /a:/, as in kawafeer ‗coiffeur‘ and of the diphthong /eɪ/, as in karafoot ‗grapefruit‘. Again, in the last example, /eɪ/ could have been realised as [a] due to spelling.
For rounding harmony, the feature [round] targets the unspecified epenthetic vowel filling its feature specification while in the case of underlying vowels, it changes the feature specification of the guttural vowel [a] into [round] and adds the feature [round] to the underspecified dorsal vowel /i/. For guttural harmony, the epenthetic unspecified vowel takes on the feature [guttural] from the guttural vowel, while underlyingly underspecified front vowels add the feature [guttural] and surface as [a]. The examples above show that [round] and [guttural] vowels are the triggers affecting most of the time the underspecified dorsal vowel [i] or epenthetic vowels. However, in case the guttural and the round vowels conflict, it is the rightward vowel that
58
I will adopt the feature [round] instead of [labial] for specifying labial vowels in conformity with the widespread use of this feature in the literature on vowel harmony.
59 The coinage is mine. This is much related to [ATR] harmony in other languages but I will not use
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induces harmony, as in munhul ‗manhole‘. This is in line with the prevalent less marked regressive assimilation cross-linguistically.60
3.2.7.4.2.2 Harmony targets
As shown above, most harmony cases target the underspecified short non-primary dorsal vowel [i] and epenthetic vowels, which do not have a correspondent in the input. This means that these epenthetic vowels do not violate any faithfulness constraints as they vacuously satisfy faithfulness. Harmony also targets round and guttural vowels in a few cases especially when they are within the same foot. For rounding targets, the most common target is the English source schwa or the short front high vowel /i/. It also applies to epenthetic vowels in seven cases. For guttural harmony, the targets are short vowels (85% of cases belong to /i/) or epenthetic vowels. Therefore, it can be claimed that harmony targets short vowels and rarely targets long vowels (one case only) because long vowels are more salient acoustically and phonologically and they make up a foot by themselves (for foot structure in AA see §5.1.4). This is much related to phonological foot structure and perceptual factors, as I will demonstrate below.
3.2.7.4.2.3 Harmony domain
Harmony in AA loanwords applies at both the foot level and the phonological word level. However, it is noticed that it is stronger at the foot level as the examples in (56) show.61 We notice that harmony applies at the foot level and may expand to a following or preceding syllable if the vowel is short. However, if it is long it does not undergo harmony. Consider the following illustrative examples in (56) that show harmony at foot and word levels.
(56) a. Harmony at the foot level: (feet are in brackets)
(dubul) ‗double‘
(mana)(kiir) ‗manicure‘
(mana)(vult) ‗manifold‘
60 Ignoring the only exception kabatʃiinu ‗cappuccino‘, which can be attributed to the fact that the
guttural vowel in the first syllable is more prominent as it is the head of the foot; hence triggers the harmony.
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b. Harmony at the word level:
ʔugzust ~ ʔigzust ‗exhaust‘
munhul ‗manhole‘
rumoot ~ rimoot ‗remote‘
As can be seen, harmony at the foot level tends to be obligatory, while optional at the word level. For example, short vowels within the same foot harmonise for the same feature while vowels outside the foot tend to harmonise less. This also accounts for free variation in words such as ʔugzust ~ ʔigzust and rumoot ~ rimoot. However, there is no variation in forms such as manakiir. In the former examples, the first vowel does not belong to the same foot but in the latter, -mana- makes up a foot so variation is not possible.
3.2.7.4.2.4 Directionality
Harmony in AA is bidirectional whereby its direction interacts with many factors: morphological structure, foot structure, quality of vowels and markedness factors. Markedness factors prefer harmony to be regressive so the rightward vowel will function as the trigger, as in munhul ‗manhole‘. Here the quality of the vowel does not determine the trigger. For quality of vowel, both guttural and round vowels trigger harmony of the underspecified non-primary dorsal vowel regardless of its position, as in manakiir ‗manicure‘ and rumoot ‗remote‘.62
For epenthetic vowels the picture is different. Directionality depends on the site of the epenthetic vowel whereby harmony spreads from the trigger into the epenthetic vowel regardless of its position in relation to the trigger. If the epenthetic vowel occurs left of the trigger spreading is also leftward and vice versa. For example, in salamun ‗salmon‘, harmony is rightward but in fulumaastar ‗flow master‘, it is leftward. That is, directionality is morphologically biased, which represents stem-controlled types of harmony (cf. Bakovic 2000). Moreover, directionality interacts with prosodic structure. Vowels within the same foot harmonise for the same feature. That is, if an epenthetic vowel is in the middle of two underlying vowels, then both vowels can be triggers. However, priority is given to the vowel with which it constitutes a foot. For
62 There is only one exception where the short non-primarydorsal seems to trigger harmony, namely
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example, in salamun, ‗salmon‘ the second epenthetic vowel receives its feature from the stressed initial vowel, with which it constitutes a foot rather than from the following round vowel.63 That is, prosodic factors here override the widespread regressive harmony.
In general, rightward spread is more common due to the influence of epenthetic vowels. Left-to-right harmony appears in 60% of cases while right-to-left harmony appears in 40% of cases.
3.2.7.4.2.5 What motivates harmony?
The two types of vowel harmony in the corpus, rounding and guttural harmony, are related to saliency and sonorancy, respectively. [Round] is one of the most acoustically salient features among vowels and a guttural vowel is more sonorous than other non-low vowels (cf. Parker 2011: 1177). This indicates that vowel harmony is phonetically motivated as it enhances perception acoustically and eases articulation by minimising the number of features involved (Cole & Kissberth 1995).
On the other hand, that many of vowel harmony cases apply to epenthetic vowels (35% of cases) and that it affects short vowels in the recipient language means that harmony affects less salient features so that it renders the output less marked. It is more marked to change the feature specification of an already specified vowel and changing the features of a long vowel is both phonetically and phonologically a more marked process (cf. Kenstowicz 2007).
To summarize, this subsection has brought more insight into the phonological process of vowel harmony in AA, a neglected area in AA. While native AA words show rounding vowel harmony, loanwords shed more light on this phenomenon and show that AA has a hidden constraint that requires vowels to harmonise for [guttural] at the foot level. Rounding harmony is triggered by round vowels and targets mostly short high front vowels and featureless vowels. Guttural harmony is triggered by guttural vowels and targets the same vowels targeted by rounding harmony. High front vowels are almost always targets of vowel harmony and hardly ever function as triggers,64 which can be attributed to both saliency and sonority. The more salient or
63 This suggests that footing is left-to-right in AA, as will be seen in §5.1.4. 64 Recall the only exception ‗emulsion‘.
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sonorous a vowel is the more likely it acts as a trigger. Furthermore, vowel harmony domain tends to be obligatory at the foot level and optional at the word level. Directionality is affected by the quality of vowels involved, prosodic structure, position of the vowel and above all it is stem-controlled where the stem vowel governs harmony.
It could also be argued that guttural vowel harmony represents a case of TETU given that native AA words do not require it as it lacks the phonological processes that induce this type of harmony (cf. Shinohara 2004; Kenstowicz & Suchato 2006: 846; Becker & Potts 2011).65 Because native AA speakers have never been exposed to such type of harmony, it should have come from somewhere else.
In the following section, I turn to other linguistic factors affecting the adaptation processes other than those that relate to AA phonology.