Tongue Root Harmony And Vowel Contrast In Northeast Asian Languages

Ko, Seong

Tongue Root Harmony And Vowel Contrast In Northeast Asian Languages

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the synchrony and diachrony of the vocalism of a variety of Northeast Asian languages, especially Korean, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, which have traditionally been described as having developed from a palatal system. The dissertation rewrites the vocalic history by demonstrating that the original vowel harmony in these languages was in fact based on an RTR, rather than a palatal, contrast, and provides a formal account for the development of individual vowel systems within the framework of Contrastive Hierarchy (Dresher, 2009). Following the general and theoretical background in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 begins to explore how the vowel contrasts in the modern Mongolic languages are hierarchically structured. It proceeds to propose an RTR analysis for Old Mongolian (contra Poppe, 1955) based on a combination of arguments from the comparative method, the typology of vowel shifts, and the phonetics of vowel features. Consequently, the palatal system in Kalmyk/Oirat is understood not as a retention but an innovation as a result of an RTR-to-palatal shift, contra Svantesson's (1985) palatal-to-RTR shift hypothesis. Chapter 3 presents an innovative view that Middle Korean had an RTR contrast-based vowel system and that various issues in Korean historical phonology receive better treatment under the contrastive hierarchy approach. Chapter 3 also argues that Ki-Moon Lee's (1964, 1972) Korean vowel shift hypothesis is untenable, based on the RTR analysis of Old Mongolian presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 4 shows that an RTR-based contrastive hierarchy analysis also holds for the lesser-studied Tungusic languages including Proto-Tungusic. Turning to theoretical issues, Chapter 5 investigates the minimal difference between Mongolic vs. Tungusic /i/ in terms of its transparency/opacity to labial harmony (van der Hulst & Smith, 1988). The contrastive hierarchy approaches to the Mongolic and Tungusic vowel systems in the previous chapters, coupled with a "fusional harmony" approach (Mester, 1986), provide a very simple but elegant solution to the minimal difference between the two languages, allowing us to maintain the Contrastivist Hypothesis (Hall, 2007). Chapter 6 addresses empirical and theoretical implications of the major findings in the main chapters and concludes the thesis.

Date Issued

2012-08-20

Keywords

contrastive hierarchy; tongue root harmony; Tungusic; Mongolic; Korean; vowel shift

Committee Chair

Whitman, John

Committee Member

Zec, Draga
Cohn, Abigail C

Degree Discipline

Linguistics

Degree Name

Ph. D., Linguistics

Degree Level

Doctor of Philosophy

Types

dissertation or thesis