An echo vowel, also known as a synharmonic vowel, is a
paragogic vowel that repeats the final
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
in a word in speech. For example, in
Chumash, when a word ends with a
glottal stop
The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...
and comes at the end of an
intonation unit, the final vowel is repeated after the glottal stop but is whispered and faint, as in for "arrow" (written ''ya).''
Languages
In modern
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, echo vowels are often added in pronunciation to the
visarga.
In
Rukai, an
Austronesian language
The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken b ...
, vowels are pronounced as full vowels but are predictable and disappear when they are under reduplication or when a suffix beginning with /a/ is added to the word:
Similarly, in the related
Uneapa, echo vowels are added after a
Proto-Oceanic final consonant, such as ''*Rumaq'' "house" > ''rumaka''.
The
Makassaric languages also occurs the echo vowels with stems ending in final /r/, /l/ or /s/. E.g. /botol/ "bottle" is realized as ''bótolo'' in
Selayar and
Coastal Konjo, and as ''bótoloʔ'' in
Makassarese (the latter regularly adds a glottal stop to the echo vowel). This echo vowel is dropped if a
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
is added, but retained if followed by an
enclitic.
Echo vowels have also been reconstructed for
Proto-Macro-Jê.
[Nikulin, Andrey. 2020. ]
Proto-Macro-Jê: um estudo reconstrutivo
'. Doctoral dissertation, University of Brasília.
Syllabaries
Echo vowels are also found in writing, especially with
syllabaries
In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) morae which make up words.
A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...
. For example, a word ''kab'' may be written as if it were ''kaba'', and ''keb'' would be written as if it were ''kebe''. Such a system is found in
Maya, with complications depending on the quality of the preceding vowel. In
Linear B
Linear B is a syllabary, syllabic script that was used for writing in Mycenaean Greek, the earliest Attested language, attested form of the Greek language. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the earliest known examp ...
, such final consonants were simply not written. However, consonant clusters were separated with echo vowels: the city of
Knossos
Knossos (; , ; Linear B: ''Ko-no-so'') is a Bronze Age archaeological site in Crete. The site was a major centre of the Minoan civilization and is known for its association with the Greek myth of Theseus and the minotaur. It is located on th ...
is written as if it were ''Konoso'' (Linear B: , ''ko-no-so'').
In
Ainu, some writers write final /r/ with a subscript
kana for ''ra'', ''re'', ''ri'', ''ro'' or ''ru'', depending on the preceding vowel, but others use a subscript ''ru'' in all cases.
See also
*
Paragoge (paragogic vowel)
References
Chumash Glossary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Echo Vowel
Orthography
Phonetics