Roughly speaking, the above ten languages can be divided into two groups: the socalled "Paleosiberian" and "Altaic" language groups. Ainuic, Amuric, Kamchukotic, Yeniseic, and Yukaghiric belong to the first group (Comrie, 1981;Vajda, 2009) and Japonic, Koreanic, Monglic, Tungusic, and Turkic belong to the second group. This thesis focuses on the second group, especially Koreanic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, which have (or once had) a vowel harmony based on tongue root contrast.Turkic languages, another major member of the "Altaic" language group, are widely understood to have a different type of vowel harmony, namely, palatal harmony. They will not be extensively investigated per se, but their vowel systems and harmony patterns will be introduced where a comparison is necessary. Japonic (Japanese-Ryukyuan) languages, on the contrary, will be ignored simply because there is no clear evidence of the existence of vowel harmony in the history of the Japanese language.Note that, although I use the term "Altaic" thoughout the thesis, it is not to be understood as suggesting a genetic relationship among them. 1 Rather, I will use it as a bik-i 'beakie' biʧ-i 'beachie' hus-i 'housie' bin-i 'beanie' ʍil-i 'wheelie' snut-i 'snooty' b. non-high vowel stems gem-e 'gamie' hɜl-e 'hilly' got-e 'goatie' her-e 'hairy' hʌrt-e 'hurtie' post-e 'postie' nel-e 'nailie' bʌk-e 'Buckie' mom-e 'mommy' hel-e 'hailie' baʧ-e 'batchie' tost-e 'toasty' nɛs-e 'Nessie' man-e 'mannie' sɔs-e 'saucy' mɛs-e 'messy' las-e 'lassie' rɔk-e 'rocky' Tongue root harmonyTongue root harmony, also rather inadequately called tenseness harmony, horizontal harmony, relative height harmony, and cross-height harmony in the literature, is based on the opposition between the advanced vs. retracted position of the tongue root.A well-known, or arguably the first known example of a canonical tongue root harmony system (cf. Cenggeltei, 1959) is Igbo, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Nigeria (Ladefoged, 1964). As shown in ( 7), the eight simple vowels in Igbo fall into 9 Palatalized and plain consonants contrast only in words with RTR vowels (Svantesson et al., 2005, p. 28).

The Korean Vowel Shift hypothesis (KVS) has been one of the most firmly entrenched tenets of Korean historical phonology since the 1960s, despite a number of published critiques from both theoretical and empirical standpoints. This paper aims to end the controversy over the KVS by demonstrating that the Mongolian loanwords, the purported primary philological evidence for the shift, do not support the KVS hypothesis. The reason for this is that the Old Mongolian vowel system that provided the source for the loans was almost certainly based on an RTR contrast, rather than the palatal contrast assumed by the KVS.

Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (2013), pp. 185-198

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 [RTRI vowel harmony. ln this paper we reinforce this conclusion, arguing specifically against proposals that [RTRI hannony 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) hannony in Northeast Asia to the status of tongue root harmony in the Centrai.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.

No abstract