Typological survey of harmony systems

[Gideon Goldenberg]

Harmony is actually not limited to vowels. What is commonly termed "vowel harmony" is not left without affecting the consonants. In modern Turkish orthography, e.g., the harmony is marked for convenience on the vowels; the same harmony was marked in the Ottoman orthography on the consonants. There is ample bibliography about synharmonism, notably by Russian Turkologists; look for "Synharmonism" already in Troubetzkoy and mainly in Russian linguistic literature under Сингармонизм. Especially in cross-linguistic typological studies, the term "vowel harmony" may be found misleading.

Gideon.

On 21 Jul 2012, at 3:30, Emily M. Bender wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> I'm looking for an estimate of prevalence of vowel harmony in the
> world's languages.  Neither WALS nor TDS has vowel harmony
> as a feature (that I can tell).  Has anyone done a large scale
> survey of harmony phenomena?
> 
> Thanks,
> Emily


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