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).