Vowel harmony and vowel reduction: The case of Swiss Italian dialects

Vowel convergence and divergence between two Swiss German dialects

Short-term accommodation is considered as one of the main factors in dialect levelling and the spread of linguistic innovations. This study investigates how speakers of Grison and Zurich German two Swiss German dialects shift their productions of short vowels after being exposed to each other's dialect in a dialogue. We found asymmetrical behaviour in accommodation between the two dialects: on ...

Vowel Harmony and Subsequentiality

Attested and ‘pathological’ vowel harmony patterns are studied in the context of subclasses of regular functions. The analysis suggests that the computational complexity of phonology can be reduced from regular to weakly deterministic.

Learning Vowel Harmony

It is possible to construct an unsupervised learning system for vowel harmony, which makes accessible general-isations. Furthermore, such a learning system can be constructed with little built-in knowledge, and, consequently, be applicable to data from a wide range of domains. This paper presents a learning system which fulllls these criteria, and examines the results of applying an implementat...

Patterns of vowel laxing and vowel harmony in Peninsular Spanish

Vowel harmony in Jingulu

Jingulu, a language of North-Central Australia, exhibits a pattern of regressive vowel harmony which is not only difficult to characterise accurately in descriptive terms, but also poses challenges for current theories of vowel harmony. The purpose of this article is thus threefold: to describe a fascinating phonological phenomenon, to formulate accurate generalisations which capture the phenom...