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A Revised Explanation of the Causes of Palatal Vowel Harmony Based on Psychoacoustic Spectra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Kari Suomi
Kari Suomi
Affiliation:
University of Turku, Department of Finnish and General Linguistics/Phonetics, Henrikinkatu 2, 20500 TURKU 50, Finland.
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Abstract

Recent research on vowel perception has seriously questioned the perceptual relevance of the formant concept and the conventional method of specifying vowel quality in terms of the lowest formants. The phonetic basis of the theory of palatal vowel harmony suggested by the author (Suomi 1983) was stated in this framework and, moreover, some of the central concepts were defined only qualitatively. The present paper is a restatement of the phonetic motivation of palatal vowel harmony against a body of perceptually more realistic and quantitative data on Finnish vowels.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , June 1984 , pp. 41 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

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