Kalaḅarị vowel harmony

Abstract

Kalabari Ijo has a restricted vowel co-occurrence pattern which derives from the operation of two types of harmonies : tongue root harmony and back harmony. It also shows a combination of characteristics associated with these independent harmonies: disharmonic low vowel /a/ in the ATR harmony and disharmonic high vowels and height dependence in the back harmony. In this paper, I propose an Optimality Theoretic constraints based analysis of both harmonies (Prince and Smolensky 1993), exploring the original hypothesis that harmony is the result of feature alignment. The central assumption is that both harmonies are general processes affecting the entire vocalic system; that is, all classes of vowels are possible undergoers of both harmonies, subject to overriding constraints. I account for the harmonies with two families of constraints; feature alignment constraints and feature co-occurrence constraints