Assimilation, Markedness and Inventory Structure in Tongue Root Harmony Systems

This paper is concerned with the related topics of assimilatory dominance and markedness relations in tongue root harmony systems. While a range of views has existed on these topics, much work in recent years adopts the view that either [+ATR] or [-ATR] can function as the dominant value in a language, and that markedness relations are determined in conjunction with tongue body height. That is, neither [+ATR] nor [-ATR] values are marked in absolute terms; instead, low [+ATR] vowels (or, in some work, all non-high [+ATR]) vowels and high [-ATR] vowels are assumed to be marked. These assumptions are reasonable ones that are supported not only by familiar functional considerations (gestural antagonism in the production of high retraced and non-high advanced) vowels but by the typological observations that languages (e.g., Yoruba) in which [-ATR] is dominant are strongly attested (as, of course, are those in which [+ATR] is dominant) and that it is the high [-ATR], low [+ATR] and mid [+ATR] vowels that are sometimes missing in languages with an [ATR] contrast.