Timugon Murut Vowel Harmony and Universal Positional Neutralisation: A Foot-Based Reanalysis

Tuesday, March 12, 12-1 p.m.

SN-4068

Research Seminar in Linguistics: Sara Mackenzie and Shanti Ulfsbjorninn

This talk presents an analysis of vowel alternations in Timugon Murut, a Dusunic language spoken on the
island of Borneo. Timugon Murut presents an intriguing case of vowel harmony, which seems to require
both a gang-effect and feature parasitism (Kroeger 1994, 2008). Moreover, the language is taken to
constitute a rare counterexample to phonological strength hierarchies in positional neutralisation
(Steriade 1994; Barnes 2003). In this paper, we offer a rather wholesale reinterpretation of the TM
phonological system, which handles the vowel harmony system without gang effects and parasitism, and
simultaneously removes TM as a counterexample to typological patterns of positional neutralisation. All
this is possible because we reinterpret ‘o’ as a featurally empty vowel. We then reanalyse the ‘vowel
harmony’ as foot-based vowel neutralisation, combined with true vowel harmony of the feature [low].
This analysis has the benefit of tying Timugon Murut closer to the analysis of vowel harmony in closely
related languages such as Kimaragang, which also presents [low]-harmony though without the confound
of foot-neutralisation.

Presented by Department of Linguistics

Event Listing 2024-03-12 12:00:00 2024-03-12 13:00:00 America/St_Johns Timugon Murut Vowel Harmony and Universal Positional Neutralisation: A Foot-Based Reanalysis Research Seminar in Linguistics: Sara Mackenzie and Shanti Ulfsbjorninn This talk presents an analysis of vowel alternations in Timugon Murut, a Dusunic language spoken on the island of Borneo. Timugon Murut presents an intriguing case of vowel harmony, which seems to require both a gang-effect and feature parasitism (Kroeger 1994, 2008). Moreover, the language is taken to constitute a rare counterexample to phonological strength hierarchies in positional neutralisation (Steriade 1994; Barnes 2003). In this paper, we offer a rather wholesale reinterpretation of the TM phonological system, which handles the vowel harmony system without gang effects and parasitism, and simultaneously removes TM as a counterexample to typological patterns of positional neutralisation. All this is possible because we reinterpret ‘o’ as a featurally empty vowel. We then reanalyse the ‘vowel harmony’ as foot-based vowel neutralisation, combined with true vowel harmony of the feature [low]. This analysis has the benefit of tying Timugon Murut closer to the analysis of vowel harmony in closely related languages such as Kimaragang, which also presents [low]-harmony though without the confound of foot-neutralisation. SN-4068 Department of Linguistics