Domains and directionality in Kinande vowel harmony: a Correspondence approach

Abstract

The ATR vowel harmony patterns observed in Kinande have received persistent attention for their combination of stem control and dominance, as well as less familiar phenomena such as dominance reversal and cross-word harmony. This paper provides a Syntagmatic Correspondence analysis of the Kinande vowel harmony system and demonstrates that it straightforwardly accounts for the intricate interaction of featural, directional and morpho-prosodic domain restrictions that define the occurring harmony patterns. The analysis obviates an appeal to dominance reversal, and cross-word harmony is shown to be phonological, not phonetic (contra Archangeli & Pulleyblank 2002; Kaisse 2019), yielding to a non-stratal analysis in the approach adopted. The analysis thus provides additional evidence for incorporating directionality into the formalization of Syntagmatic Correspondence constraints and for morpho-prosodic domain limitations on these and other OT constraints.

Keywords

• phonology
• constraint domains
• interfaces
• Optimality Theory
• ATR vowel harmony