Vowel Harmony in Papuan languages

Abstract

This chapter reflects the current descriptive and typological asymmetry of vowel harmony (VH) in Papuan languages by presenting two cases of ‘unbounded’ VH: Amele and Umbu-Ungu, and four cases where harmony is more local: Mian, Ngkolmpu, Komnzo, and Kaera. Ngkolmpu and Umbu-Ungu show harmony of a particular phonetic feature, while the other languages show harmony with the entire vowel. In most cases, harmony is leftward, but it is rightward in Umbu-Ungu, while Amele has harmony in both directions. The vowel triggering the harmony is part of a lexical root in Ngkolmpu, Mian, Umbu-Ungu, and Kaera. In Komnzo and Amele, it is part of functional items, but in Amele harmony in the nominal domain is also triggered by noun stem vowels. Umbu-Ungu is the only language where harmony occurs beyond the morphological word to include phrasal enclitics. VH is related to unspecified vowels and epenthesis in Amele.