ESTONIAN ACADEMY
PUBLISHERS
eesti teaduste
akadeemia kirjastus
PUBLISHED
SINCE 1965
 
Linguistica Uralica cover
Linguistica Uralica
ISSN 1736-7506 (Electronic)
ISSN 0868-4731 (Print)
Research article
Vowel Harmony in the Kihnu Variety of ­Estonian: A Corpus Study; pp. 181–199
PDF | https://dx.doi.org/10.3176/lu.2023.3.02

Author
Kaili Vesik
Abstract

This paper investigates back/front vowel harmony in the Kihnu variety of Estonian. Data from the Estonian Dialect Corpus are analyzed to inform the description of harmony in this dialect, a phenomenon that has been understudied in the literature. Previously reported patterns of categorical harmony (/u/-/y/ and /ɑ/-/æ/ pairs) and transparency (/i/) are confirmed. However, the corpus provides insufficient direct evidence to either support or refute previous descriptions of the /o/-/ø/ pair as non-participatory. Subtleties of a relationship previously described as variable (/e/-/ɤ/ pair) are explored in more depth, with /e/ proposed as a second transparent vowel. Vowel harmony is also explored in Kihnu Estonian’s rich inventory of diphthongs, with intra-syllabic harmony in diphthongs shown to occur at a similar rate to that of inter-syllabic harmony between monophthongs.

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