In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning that the affected vowels do not need to be immediately adjacent, and there can be intervening segments between the affected vowels. Generally one vowel will trigger a shift in other vowels, either progressively or regressively, within the domain, such that the affected vowels match the relevant feature of the trigger vowel. Common phonological features that define the natural classes of vowels involved in vowel harmony include vowel backness, vowel height, nasalization, roundedness, and advanced and retracted tongue root.
Vowel harmony is found in many agglutinative languages. The given domain of vowel harmony taking effect often spans across morpheme boundaries, and suffixes and prefixes will usually follow vowel harmony rules.
See also: Germanic umlaut, I-mutation and Metaphony. The term vowel harmony is used in two different senses.
In the first sense, it refers to any type of long distance assimilatory process of vowels, either progressive or regressive. When used in this sense, the term vowel harmony is synonymous with the term metaphony.
In the second sense, vowel harmony refers only to progressive vowel harmony (beginning-to-end). For regressive harmony, the term umlaut is used. In this sense, metaphony is the general term while vowel harmony and umlaut are both sub-types of metaphony. The term umlaut is also used in a different sense to refer to a type of vowel gradation. This article will use "vowel harmony" for both progressive and regressive harmony.
Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). In other words, harmony refers to the assimilation of sounds that are not adjacent to each other. For example, a vowel at the beginning of a word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at the end of a word. The assimilation occurs across the entire word in many languages. This is represented schematically in the following diagram:
| before assimilation | after assimilation | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VaCVbCVbC | → | VaCVaCVaC | (Va = type-a vowel, Vb = type-b vowel, C = consonant) |
In the diagram above, the
Va (type-a vowel) causes the following Vb (type-b vowel) to assimilate and become the same type of vowel (and thus they become, metaphorically, "in harmony").The vowel that causes the vowel assimilation is frequently termed the trigger while the vowels that assimilate (or harmonize) are termed targets. When the vowel triggers lie within the root or stem of a word and the affixes contain the targets, this is called stem-controlled vowel harmony (the opposite situation is called dominant).[1] This is fairly common among languages with vowel harmony and may be seen in the Hungarian dative suffix:
| Root | Dative | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hungarian: város | Hungarian: város'''-nak''' | 'city' | |
| Hungarian: öröm | Hungarian: öröm'''-nek''' | 'joy' |
The dative suffix has two different forms Hungarian: -nak/-nek. The Hungarian: -nak form appears after the root with back vowels (Hungarian: o and Hungarian: a are back vowels). The Hungarian: -nek form appears after the root with front vowels (Hungarian: ö and Hungarian: e are front vowels).
Vowel harmony often involves dimensions such as
| Rose & Walker (2011)[2] | Ko (2018)[3] [4] [5] | Dimension | Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backness Harmony | Palatal harmony | back or front | ||
| Round Harmony | Labial harmony | rounded or unrounded | ||
| Height Harmony | Height harmony | high or low | ||
| Tongue Root Harmony | Tongue root harmony | advanced or retracted |
In many languages, vowels can be said to belong to particular sets or classes, such as back vowels or rounded vowels. Some languages have more than one system of harmony. For instance, Altaic languages are proposed to have a rounding harmony superimposed over a backness harmony.
Even among languages with vowel harmony, not all vowels need to participate in the vowel conversions; these vowels are termed neutral. Neutral vowels may be opaque and block harmonic processes or they may be transparent and not affect them. Intervening consonants are also often transparent.
Finally, languages that do have vowel harmony often allow for lexical disharmony, or words with mixed sets of vowels even when an opaque neutral vowel is not involved. Van der Hulst & van de Weijer (1995) point to two such situations: polysyllabic trigger morphemes may contain non-neutral vowels from opposite harmonic sets and certain target morphemes simply fail to harmonize. Many loanwords exhibit disharmony. For example, Turkish Turkish: vakit, ('time' [from Arabic {{transl|ar|waqt}}]); *Turkish: vak'''ı'''t would have been expected.
There are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive, negative, and neutral. These categories loosely follow the front (positive) and mid (negative) vowels. Middle Korean had strong vowel harmony; however, this rule is no longer observed strictly in modern Korean. In modern Korean, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia, adjectives, adverbs, conjugation, and interjections. The vowel Korean: ㅡ is considered a partially neutral and a partially negative vowel. There are other traces of vowel harmony in modern Korean: many native Korean words tend to follow vowel harmony, such as Korean: 사람 ('person') and Korean: 부엌 ('kitchen').
| Positive/"light" (Yang Korean: 陽)/Plus VowelsKorean: 양성모음 (Yangseong moeum) | Korean: ㅏ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅑ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅗ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅘ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅛ (pronounced as /ko/) | (Korean: ㆍ pronounced as /ko/) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Korean: ㅐ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅒ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅚ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅙ (pronounced as /ko/) | (Korean: ㆉ pronounced as /ko/) | (Korean: ㆎ pronounced as /ko/) | |||
| Negative/"dark" (Eum Korean: 陰)/Minus VowelsKorean: 음성모음 (eumseong moeum) | Korean: ㅓ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅕ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅜ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅝ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅠ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅡ (pronounced as /ko/) | ||
| Korean: ㅔ (pronounced as /ko/)) | Korean: ㅖ (pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅟ (pronounced as /ko/, pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅞ (pronounced as /ko/) | (Korean: ㆌ pronounced as /ko/) | Korean: ㅢ (pronounced as /ko/) | |||
| Neutral (Jung Korean: 中)/Centre VowelsKorean: 중성모음 (jungseong moeum) | Korean: ㅣ (pronounced as /ko/) | |||||||
| -RTR | э[{{IPA|e}}] | ү[{{IPA|u}}] | ө[{{IPA|o}}] | и[{{IPA|i}}] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| +RTR | а[{{IPA|a}}] | у[{{IPA|ʊ}}] | о[{{IPA|ɔ}}] | |
Mongolian exhibits both a tongue root harmony and a rounding harmony. In particular, the tongue root harmony involves the vowels: pronounced as //a, ʊ, ɔ// (+RTR) and pronounced as //i, u, e, o// (-RTR). The vowel pronounced as //i// is phonetically similar to the -RTR vowels. However, it is largely transparent to vowel harmony. Rounding harmony only affects the open vowels, pronounced as //e, o, a, ɔ//. Some sources refer to the primary harmonization dimension as pharyngealization or patalalness (among others), but neither of these is technically correct. Likewise, referring to ±RTR as the sole defining feature of vowel categories in Mongolian is not fully accurate either. In any case, the two vowel categories differ primarily with regards to tongue root position, and ±RTR is a convenient and fairly accurate descriptor for the articulatory parameters involved.[6] [7] [8]
Turkic languages inherit their systems of vowel harmony from Proto-Turkic, which already had a fully developed system. The one exception is Uzbek, which has lost its vowel harmony due to extensive Persian influence; however, its closest relative, Uyghur, has retained Turkic vowel harmony.
Azerbaijani's system of vowel harmony has both front/back and rounded/unrounded vowels.[9]
| Azerbaijani Vowel Harmony | Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||
| Vowel | e, ə, i | ö, ü | a, ı | o, u | |
| Two form suffix (iki şəkilli şəkilçilər) | ə | a | |||
| Four form suffix (dörd şəkilli şəkilçilər) | i | ü | ı | u | |
Tatar has no neutral vowels. The vowel é is found only in loanwords. Other vowels also could be found in loanwords, but they are seen as Back vowels. Tatar language also has a rounding harmony, but it is not represented in writing. O and ö could be written only in the first syllable, but vowels they mark could be pronounced in the place where ı and e are written.
| Front | ä | e | i | ö | ü | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | a | ı | í | o | u | é |
Kazakh's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony that is not represented by the orthography.
Kyrgyz's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony, which strongly resembles that of Kazakh.
Turkish has a 2-dimensional vowel harmony system, where vowels are characterised by two features: [±front] and [±rounded]. There are two sets of vocal harmony systems: a simple one and a complex one. The simple one is concerned with the low vowels e, a and has only the [±front] feature (e front vs a back). The complex one is concerned with the high vowels i, ü, ı, u and has both [±front] and [±rounded] features (i front unrounded vs ü front rounded and ı back unrounded vs u back rounded). The close-mid vowels ö, o are not involved in vowel harmony processes.
| Turkish Vowel Harmony | Front | Back | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||||||
| Vowel | e /e/ | i /i/ | ö /ø/ | ü /y/ | a /a/ | ı /ɯ/ | o /o/ | u /u/ | |
| Simple system | e | a | |||||||
| Complex system | i | ü | ı | u | |||||
Turkish has two classes of vowelsfront and back. Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels. Therefore, most grammatical suffixes come in front and back forms, e.g. Türkiye'de "in Turkey" but Almanya'da "in Germany".
| Nom.sg | Gen.sg. | Nom.pl | Gen.pl. | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turkish: ip | Turkish: ipin | Turkish: ipler | Turkish: iplerin | 'rope' | |
| Turkish: el | Turkish: elin | Turkish: eller | Turkish: ellerin | 'hand' | |
| Turkish: kız | Turkish: kızın | Turkish: kızlar | Turkish: kızların | 'girl' |
In addition, there is a secondary rule that Turkish: i and Turkish: ı in suffixes tend to become Turkish: ü and Turkish: u respectively after rounded vowels, so certain suffixes have additional forms. This gives constructions such as Türkiye'dir "it is Turkey", Turkish: kapı'''dır''' "it is the door", but Turkish: gün'''dür''' "it is the day", Turkish: karpuz'''dur''' "it is the watermelon".
Not all suffixes obey vowel harmony perfectly.
In the suffix Turkish: -(i)yor, the Turkish: o is invariant, while the Turkish: i changes according to the preceding vowel; for example Turkish: sön'''ü'''y'''o'''r – "he/she/it fades". Likewise, in the suffix Turkish: -(y)ken, the Turkish: e is invariant: Turkish: Roma'dayk'''e'''n – "When in Rome"; and so is the Turkish: i in the suffix Turkish: -(y)ebil: Turkish: inanıl'''a'''b'''i'''lir – "credible". The suffix Turkish: -ki exhibits partial harmony, never taking a back vowel but allowing only the front-voweled variant Turkish: -kü: Turkish: dünk'''ü''' – "belonging to yesterday"; Turkish: yarınk'''i''' – "belonging to tomorrow".
Most Turkish words do not only have vowel harmony for suffixes, but also internally. However, there are many exceptions.
Compound words are considered separate words with respect to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between members of the compound (thus forms like Turkish: ''bu''{{pipe "this|day" = "today" are permissible). Vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords, as in Turkish: otobüs – from French "autobus". There are also a few native modern Turkish words that do not follow the rule (such as Turkish: anne "mother" or Turkish: kardeş "sibling" which used to obey vowel harmony in their older forms, Turkish: ana and Turkish: karındaş, respectively). However, in such words, suffixes nevertheless harmonize with the final vowel; thus Turkish: annes'''i''' – "his/her mother", and Turkish: voleybolc'''u''' – "volleyballer".
In some loanwords the final vowel is an Turkish: a, Turkish: o or Turkish: u and thus looks like a back vowel, but is phonetically actually a front vowel, and governs vowel harmony accordingly. An example is the word Turkish: saat, meaning "hour" or "clock", a loanword from Arabic. Its plural is Turkish: sa'''a'''tl'''e'''r. This is not truly an exception to vowel harmony itself; rather, it is an exception to the rule that Turkish: a denotes a front vowel.
Disharmony tends to disappear through analogy, especially within loanwords; e.g. Turkish: Hüsnü (a man's name) < earlier Turkish: Hüsni, from Arabic husnî; Turkish: Müslüman "Moslem, Muslim (adj. and n.)" < Ottoman Turkish, from Persian mosalmân).
Tuvan has one of the most complete systems of vowel harmony among the Turkic languages.[11]
Persian is a language which includes various types of regressive and progressive vowel harmony in different words and expressions. [12]
In Persian, progressive vowel harmony only applies to prepositions/post-positions when attached to pronouns.
| Be (To) | man (I) | Behem (to me) | |
| Az (From) | man (I) | Azam (from me) | |
| Ba (With) | man (I) | Baham (with me) | |
| Ra (At/For) | man (I) | Mara (at/for me) | |
| to (you) | Toro (at/for you) |
| Be-do (to run) | Bodo | |
| Be-kon (to do) | Bokon | |
| Be-ro (to go) | Boro | |
| Be-kosh (to kill) | Bokosh |
Many, though not all, Uralic languages show vowel harmony between front and back vowels. Vowel harmony is often hypothesized to have existed in Proto-Uralic, though its original scope remains a matter of discussion.
Vowel harmony is found in Nganasan and is reconstructed also for Proto-Samoyedic.
Hungarian, like its distant relative Finnish, has the same system of front, back, and intermediate (neutral) vowels but is more complex than the one in Finnish, and some vowel harmony processes. The basic rule is that words including at least one back vowel get back vowel suffixes (Hungarian: kar'''ba''' – in(to) the arm), while words excluding back vowels get front vowel suffixes (Hungarian: kéz'''be''' – in(to) the hand). Single-vowel words which have only the neutral vowels (Hungarian: i, Hungarian: í or Hungarian: é) are unpredictable, but Hungarian: e takes a front-vowel suffix.
One essential difference in classification between Hungarian and Finnish is that standard Hungarian (along with 3 out of 10 local dialects) does not observe the difference between Finnish 'ä' pronounced as /[æ]/ and 'e' pronounced as /[e]/the Hungarian front vowel 'e' pronounced as /[ɛ]/ is closely pronounced as the Finnish front vowel 'ä' pronounced as /[æ]/. 7 out of the 10 local dialects have the vowel ë pronounced as /[e]/ which has never been part of the Hungarian alphabet, and thus is not used in writing.
| Front | e | é | i | í | ö | ő | ü | ű |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | a | á | - | - | o | ó | u | ú |
Unrounded front vowels (or Intermediate or neutral vowels) can occur together with either back vowels (e.g. Hungarian: r'''é'''p'''a''' carrot, Hungarian: k'''o'''cs'''i''' car) or rounded front vowels (e.g. Hungarian: tető, Hungarian: tündér), but rounded front vowels and back vowels can occur together only in words of foreign origins (e.g. Hungarian: sofőr = chauffeur, French word for driver). The basic rule is that words including at least one back vowel take back vowel suffixes (e.g. Hungarian: répában in a carrot, Hungarian: kocsiban in a car), while words excluding back vowels usually take front vowel suffixes (except for words including only the vowels Hungarian: i or Hungarian: í, for which there is no general rule, e.g. Hungarian: lisztet, Hungarian: hídat).
| open | middle | closed | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | a á | o ó | u ú | |
| Front | unrounded | e é | i í | |
| rounded | ö ő | ü ű | ||
Some other rules and guidelines to consider:
Grammatical suffixes in Hungarian can have one, two, three, or four forms:
An example on basic numerals:
| Hungarian: -kor | Hungarian: -ban/-ben | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | hat (6) | Hungarian: hat'''kor'''<br>nyolc'''kor'''<br>három'''kor'''<br>–<br>egy'''kor'''<br>négy'''kor'''<br>kilenc'''kor'''<br>tíz'''kor'''<br>öt'''kor'''<br>kettő'''kor''' | Hungarian: hat'''ban'''<br>nyolc'''ban'''<br>három'''ban'''<br>száz'''ban''' | Hungarian: hat'''hoz'''<br>nyolc'''hoz'''<br>három'''hoz'''<br>száz'''hoz''' | hatot | |
| Hungarian: ny'''o'''lc (8) Hungarian: h'''á'''r'''o'''m (3) Hungarian: sz'''á'''z (100) | Hungarian: nyolc'''at'''<br>hárm'''at'''<br>száz'''at''' | |||||
| Front | unrounded | Hungarian: '''e'''gy (1) Hungarian: n'''é'''gy (4) Hungarian: k'''i'''l'''e'''nc (9) Hungarian: t'''í'''z (10) | Hungarian: egy'''ben'''<br>négy'''ben'''<br>kilenc'''ben'''<br>tíz'''ben'''<br>öt'''ben'''<br>kettő'''ben''' | Hungarian: egy'''hez'''<br>négy'''hez'''<br>kilenc'''hez'''<br>tíz'''hez''' | Hungarian: egy'''et''' <br> négy'''et''' <br> kilenc'''et'''<br>tíz'''et''' | |
| rounded | Hungarian: '''ö'''t (5) Hungarian: kett'''ő''' (2) | Hungarian: öt'''höz'''<br>kettő'''höz''' | Hungarian: öt'''öt''' <br> kettő'''t''' | |||
Vowel harmony occurred in Southern Mansi.
In the Khanty language, vowel harmony occurs in the Eastern dialects, and affects both inflectional and derivational suffixes. The Vakh-Vasyugan dialect has a particularly extensive system of vowel harmony:[13]
| Front | pronounced as //æ// | pronounced as //ø// | pronounced as //y// | pronounced as //i// | pronounced as //ɪ// | pronounced as //ʏ// | pronounced as //e// | pronounced as //œ// | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | pronounced as //ɑ// | pronounced as //o// | pronounced as //u// | pronounced as //ɯ// | pronounced as //ʌ// | pronounced as //ʊ// | pronounced as //ɔ// |
| Front | pronounced as //æ// | pronounced as //ø// | pronounced as //y// | pronounced as //i// | pronounced as //ɪ// | pronounced as //ʏ// | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back | pronounced as //ɑ// | pronounced as //o// | pronounced as //u// | pronounced as //ɯ// | pronounced as //ʌ// | pronounced as //ʊ// |
Trigger vowels occur in the first syllable of a word, and control the backness of the entire word. Target vowels are affected by vowel harmony and are arranged in seven front-back pairs of similar height and roundedness, which are assigned the archiphonemes A, O, U, I, Ɪ, Ʊ.
The vowels pronounced as //e//, pronounced as //œ// and pronounced as //ɔ// appear only in the first syllable of a word, and are thus strictly trigger vowels. All other vowel qualities may act in both roles.
Vowel harmony is lost in the Northern and Southern dialects, as well as in the Surgut dialect of Eastern Khanty.
Most varieties of the Mari language have vowel harmony.
The Erzya language has a limited system of vowel harmony, involving only two vowel phonemes: pronounced as //e// (front) versus pronounced as //o// (back).
Moksha, the closest relative of Erzya, has no phonemic vowel harmony, though pronounced as //ə// has front and back allophones in a distribution similar to the vowel harmony in Erzya.
Vowel harmony is found in most of the Finnic languages. It has been lost in Livonian and in Standard Estonian, where the front vowels ü ä ö occur only in the first (stressed) syllable. South Estonian Võro (and Seto) language as well as some [North] Estonian dialects, however, retain vowel harmony.
In the Finnish language, there are three classes of vowelsfront, back, and neutral, where each front vowel has a back vowel pairing. Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endingsbut not encliticshave only archiphonemic vowels U, O, A, which are realized as either back pronounced as /[u, o, ɑ]/ or front pronounced as /[y, ø, æ]/ inside a single word. From vowel harmony it follows that the initial syllable of each single (non-compound) word controls the frontness or backness of the entire word. Non-initially, the neutral vowels are transparent to and unaffected by vowel harmony. In the initial syllable:
For example:
Some dialects that have a sound change opening diphthong codas also permit archiphonemic vowels in the initial syllable. For example, standard 'ie' is reflected as 'ia' or 'iä', controlled by noninitial syllables, in the Tampere dialect, e.g. Finnish: tiä ← Finnish: tie but Finnish: miakka ← Finnish: miekka
... as evidenced by Finnish: tuotteessa (not Finnish: *tuotteessä). Even if phonologically front vowels precede the suffix Finnish: -nsa, grammatically it is preceded by a word controlled by a back vowel. As shown in the examples, neutral vowels make the system unsymmetrical, as they are front vowels phonologically, but leave the front/back control to any grammatical front or back vowels. There is little or no change in the actual vowel quality of the neutral vowels.
As a consequence, Finnish speakers often have problems with pronouncing foreign words which do not obey vowel harmony. For example, Finnish: olympia is often pronounced Finnish: olumpia. The position of some loans is unstandardized (e.g. Finnish: chattailla/chättäillä) or ill-standardized (e.g. Finnish: polymeeri, sometimes pronounced Finnish: polumeeri, and Finnish: autoritäärinen, which violate vowel harmony). Where a foreign word violates vowel harmony by not using front vowels because it begins with a neutral vowel, then last syllable generally counts, although this rule is irregularly followed.[14] Experiments indicate that e.g. Finnish: miljonääri always becomes (front) Finnish: miljonääriä, but Finnish: marttyyri becomes equally frequently both Finnish: marttyyria (back) and Finnish: marttyyriä (front), even by the same speaker.
With respect to vowel harmony, compound words can be considered separate words. For example, Finnish: syyskuu ("autumn month" i.e. September) has both u and y, but it consists of two words Finnish: syys and Finnish: kuu, and declines Finnish: syys·kuu·ta (not Finnish: *syyskuutä). The same goes for enclitics, e.g. Finnish: taaksepäin "backwards" consists of the word Finnish: taakse "to back" and Finnish: -päin "-wards", which gives e.g. Finnish: taaksepäinkään (not Finnish: *taaksepäinkaan or Finnish: *taaksepainkaan). If fusion takes place, the vowel is harmonized by some speakers, e.g. Finnish: tälläinen pro Finnish: tällainen ← Finnish: tämän lainen.
Some Finnish words whose stems contain only neutral vowels exhibit an alternating pattern in terms of vowel harmony when inflected or forming new words through derivation. Examples include Finnish: meri "sea", Finnish: meressä "in the sea" (inessive), but Finnish: merta (partitive), not Finnish: *mertä; Finnish: veri "blood", Finnish: verestä "from the blood" (elative), but Finnish: verta (partitive), not Finnish: *vertä; Finnish: pelätä "to be afraid", but Finnish: pelko "fear", not Finnish: *pelkö; Finnish: kipu "pain", but Finnish: kipeä "sore", not Finnish: *kipea.
Helsinki slang has slang words that have roots violating vowel harmony, e.g. Finnish: Sörkka. This can be interpreted as Swedish influence.
The Veps language has partially lost vowel harmony.
Vowel harmony is present in all Yokutsan languages and dialects. For instance, Yawelmani has 4 vowels (which additionally may be either long or short). These can be grouped as in the table below.
| Unrounded | Rounded | |
| High | pronounced as /i/ | pronounced as /u/ |
| Low | pronounced as /a/ | pronounced as /ɔ/ |
Vowels in suffixes must harmonize with either pronounced as //u// or its non-pronounced as //u// counterparts or with pronounced as //ɔ// or non-pronounced as //ɔ// counterparts. For example, the vowel in the aorist suffix appears as pronounced as //u// when it follows a pronounced as //u// in the root, but when it follows all other vowels it appears as pronounced as //i//. Similarly, the vowel in the nondirective gerundial suffix appears as pronounced as //ɔ// when it follows an pronounced as //ɔ// in the root; otherwise it appears as pronounced as //a//.
| Word | IPA | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| -hun/-hin | (aorist suffix) | ||
| muṭhun | pronounced as /[muʈhun]/ | 'swear (aorist)' | |
| giy̓hin | pronounced as /[ɡijˀhin]/ | 'touch (aorist)' | |
| gophin | pronounced as /[ɡɔphin]/ | 'take of infant (aorist)' | |
| xathin | pronounced as /[xathin]/ | 'eat (aorist)' | |
| -tow/-taw | (nondirective gerundial suffix) | ||
| goptow | pronounced as /[ɡɔptɔw]/ | 'take care of infant (nondir. ger.)' | |
| giy̓taw | pronounced as /[ɡijˀtaw]/ | 'touch (nondir. ger.)' | |
| muṭtaw | pronounced as /[muʈtaw]/ | 'swear (nondir. ger.)' | |
| xattaw | pronounced as /[xatːaw]/ | 'eat (nondir. ger.)' |
In addition to the harmony found in suffixes, there is a harmony restriction on word stems where in stems with more than one syllable all vowels are required to be of the same lip rounding and tongue height dimensions. For example, a stem must contain all high rounded vowels or all low rounded vowels, etc. This restriction is further complicated by (i) long high vowels being lowered and (ii) an epenthetic vowel pronounced as /[i]/ which does not harmonize with stem vowels.
In Bengali, the main vowel harmony is seen in the case of ɔ and o. A word can never end with the ɔ sound. If there is an 'অ' in a word followed by the i sound, or an u sound, then it is pronounced as o, otherwise it is pronounced as ɔ. For example, অনুবাদ (onubad)(translation) and অনেক (ɔnek) (many) begin with the same letter being pronounced differently due to the presence of 'u' after 'o' in the first one. Similarly, in the absence of any diacritic marks on any consonant letter, its default vowel is 'ɔ' or 'o' using the same rule. For example করি (kori)(I do) and (কর)(kɔro)(you do) are pronounced using the same rules.
There is some evidence for vowel harmony according to vowel height or ATR in the prefix i3/e- in inscriptions from pre-Sargonic Lagash (the specifics of the pattern have led a handful of scholars to postulate not only an pronounced as //o// phoneme, but even an pronounced as //ɛ// and, most recently, an pronounced as //ɔ//)[15] Many cases of partial or complete assimilation of the vowel of certain prefixes and suffixes to one in the adjacent syllable are reflected in writing in some of the later periods, and there is a noticeable though not absolute tendency for disyllabic stems to have the same vowel in both syllables.[16] What appears to be vowel contraction in hiatus (*/aa/, */ia/, */ua/ > a, */ae/ > a, */ue/ > u, etc.) is also very common.
Vowel harmony occurs to some degree in many other languages, such as
Although vowel harmony is the most well-known harmony, not all types of harmony that occur in the world's languages involve only vowels. Other types of harmony involve consonants (and is known as consonant harmony). Rarer types of harmony are those that involve tone or both vowels and consonants (e.g. postvelar harmony).
Some languages have harmony processes that involve an interaction between vowels and consonants. For example, Chilcotin has a phonological process known as vowel flattening (i.e. post-velar harmony) where vowels must harmonize with uvular and pharyngealized consonants.
Chilcotin has two classes of vowels:
Additionally, Chilcotin has a class of pharyngealized "flat" consonants pronounced as /[tsˤ, tsʰˤ, tsʼˤ, sˤ, zˤ]/. Whenever a consonant of this class occurs in a word, all preceding vowels must be flat vowels.
| pronounced as /[jətʰeɬtsˤʰosˤ]/ | 'he's holding it (fabric)' | |
| pronounced as /[ʔapələsˤ]/ | 'apples' | |
| pronounced as /[natʰákʼə̃sˤ]/ | 'he'll stretch himself' |
If flat consonants do not occur in a word, then all vowels will be of the non-flat class:
| pronounced as /[nænɛntʰǽsʊç]/ | 'I'll comb hair' | |
| pronounced as /[tetʰǽskʼɛn]/ | 'I'll burn it' | |
| pronounced as /[tʰɛtɬʊç]/ | 'he laughs' |
Other languages of this region of North America (the Plateau culture area), such as St'át'imcets, have similar vowel–consonant harmonic processes.
Syllabic synharmony was a process in the Proto-Slavic language ancestral to all modern Slavic languages. It refers to the tendency of frontness (palatality) to be generalised across an entire syllable. It was therefore a form of consonant–vowel harmony in which the property 'palatal' or 'non-palatal' applied to an entire syllable at once rather than to each sound individually.
The result was that back vowels were fronted after j or a palatal consonant, and consonants were palatalised before j or a front vowel. Diphthongs were harmonized as well, although they were soon monophthongized because of a tendency to end syllables with a vowel (syllables were or became open). This rule remained in place for a long time, and ensured that a syllable containing a front vowel always began with a palatal consonant, and a syllable containing j was always preceded by a palatal consonant and followed by a front vowel.
A similar process occurs in Skolt Sami, where palatalization of consonants and fronting of vowels is a suprasegmental process applying to a whole syllable. Suprasegmental palatalization is marked with the letter ʹ, which is a Modifier letter prime, for example in the word vääʹrr 'mountain, hill'.