An echo vowel, also known as a synharmonic vowel, is a paragogic vowel that repeats the final

vowel 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 ...

in a word in speech. For example, in

Chumash Chumash may refer to: *Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism *Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California *Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California See also *Chumash traditional n ...

, when a word ends with a glottal stop and comes at the end of an

intonation unit In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour ( pitch and rhythm contour). The abbreviation IU is used and therefore the full form is o ...

, 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 (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

, echo vowels are often added in pronunciation to the

visarga Visarga ( sa, विसर्गः, translit=visargaḥ) means "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology ('' ''), ' (also called, equivalently, ' by earlier grammarians) is the name of a phone voiceless glottal fricative, , written as: ...

. In Rukai, an Austronesian language, 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 is added, but retained if followed by an

enclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...

. 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. 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 Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popul ...

, with complications depending on the quality of the preceding vowel. In Linear B, such final consonants were simply not written. However, consonant clusters were separated with echo vowels: the city of

Knossos Knossos (also Cnossos, both pronounced ; grc, Κνωσός, Knōsós, ; Linear B: ''Ko-no-so'') is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and has been called Europe's oldest city. Settled as early as the Neolithic period, the na ...

is written as if it were ''Konoso'' (Linear B: , ''ko-no-so''). In Ainu, some writers write final /r/ with a subscript

kana The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most p ...

for ''ra'', ''re'', ''ri'', ''ro'' or ''ru'', depending on the preceding vowel, but others use a subscript ''ru'' in all cases.

References

Chumash Glossary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Echo Vowel Orthography Phonetics