Palatal harmony, also called palatovelar harmony, is a type of

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, mea ...

that manifests in forcing agreement between vowels that are either neighboring or in the same word regarding their

place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...

-- specifically the difference between the palatal-articulated front vowels and the back vowels which are articulated closer to the

velum Velum may refer to: Human anatomy * Superior medullary velum, anterior medullary velum or valve of Vieussens, white matter, in the brain, which stretches between the superior cerebellar peduncles ** Frenulum of superior medullary velum, a sligh ...

. It is found in

Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...

and

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia ( Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic l ...

, as well as the North American languages of

Yawelmani Yawelmani Yokuts (also spelled Yowlumne and Yauelmani) is an endangered dialect of Southern Valley Yokuts historically spoken by the Yokuts living along the Kern River north of Kern Lake in the Central Valley of California. Today, most Yawelma ...

and many others. Under the palatal harmony rule a word may contain either all back vowels or front vowels.

Turkish

Vowel harmony in Turkish and other Turkic languages has "multiple features" — in some cases, agreement between vowels is required with respect to more than one

distinctive feature In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that distinguishes one sound from another within a language. For example, the feature oicedistinguishes the two bilabial plosives: and There are many diff ...

. One of those features is called "backness" or what is more formally called palatal harmony. While all Turkic vowels agree in "backness" (palatal harmony), some high vowels may also agree in "roundness" ( labial harmony). For example, the root vowel in the word , meaning face, is rounded, but the nominative plural suffix only agrees with the root vowel in backness, not roundness (). The genitive singular suffix -ün, as in agrees with the root vowel in respect to both backness and roundness. Several examples from Turkish demonstrate roundness harmony with backness (palatal) harmony (note that in Turkish is strictly a back vowel) : In the above examples, the suffix vowel alternates with

vowel backness A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

and roundness, but not

vowel height A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (le ...

Turkic languages

Chagatay

Vowels in Chagatay Turkic exhibits palatal harmony with back vowels (suffixes containing ) or front vowels (suffixes containing ):

References

{{reflist Assimilation (linguistics)