Vowel Harmony in Government Phonology

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines Government Phonology (GP), a principles-and-parameters approach to phonological representations employing monovalent elements and relationships of government and licensing. In GP analyses of vowel harmony (VH), spreading of the harmonic element results from a governing relation between nuclei adjacent on the independently motivated level of nuclear projection. The chapter covers three issues in detail. Concerning the typology of VH, Element Theory predicts the existence of palatal/I, labial/U, and lowering/A-harmony in terms of spreading; ATR harmony as head agreement; and backing, unrounding, or raising harmony as reduction. Restrictions on the domain of harmony are accounted for utilizing the distinction between synthetic and analytic morphology, together with blocking in non-derived environments, as well as employing licensing constraints defining possible element combinations. The behavior of neutral vowels as transparent or opaque is proposed to follow from whether they contain the harmonic element in their representation.