Subject: k . polgardi , vowel harmony

vowel harmony . an account in terms of governement and optimality by krisztina polgardi vowel harmony deals with some theoretical problems concerning the phenomenon of vowel harmony , in a framework combining insights from government phonology , optimality theory and lexical phonology . the study introduces and motivates the general framework and examines three issues . the first concerns the typology of vowel harmony systems and how an element-based feature theory , comprised of the three elements i , a and u and supplemented by the property of headedness , can account for all the different types of harmony . the second concerns the domain of harmony and the question of how to handle disharmonicity in the proposed model . the third involves the so-called neutral vowels , i . e . those vowels in a system that do not have a harmonic counterpart . it is claimed that the behaviour of neutral vowels can be predicted from their segmental make-up and from particular properties of the vowel systems involved . polgrdi argues that the theory of government phonology ( a principles-and - parameters approach ) needs to be supplemented by constraint ranking , because certain types of phenomena cannot be accounted for otherwise . since ranking is shown to be necessary , language variation can now be exclusively expressed by this device , and the notion of param - eters can be abandoned . polgrdi also argues that a non-derivational version of the strict cycle condition also needs to be incorporated into the theory to account for so-called derived environment effects ( of which disharmonicity is shown to be an example ) . 1998 . xii + 200 pp . isbn 90-5569 - 046 - 5 . paperback . lot interna - tional series 3 . hil / leiden university dissertation . price for individuals ordering directly from the publisher : nlg 36 , 90 , excl . vat and p&p . holland academic graphics , the hague < http : / / www . hag . nl > rint sybesma holland academic graphics po box 53292 2505 ag the hague the netherlands fax : + 31 70 448 0177
