Palatal harmony, also called palatovelar harmony, is a type of vowel harmony 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 an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...

-- specifically the difference between the palatal-articulated

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction th ...

s and the

back vowel A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...

s which are articulated closer to the velum. It is found in Finno-Ugric and

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 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 West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

, as well as the North American languages of Yawelmani and many others. Under the palatal harmony rule a word may contain either all

s or

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 phonology, phonological structure that distinguishes one Phone (phonetics), sound from another within a language. For example, the feature Voice (phonetics), voice''distinguishes ...

. 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 and roundness, but not vowel height.

Turkic languages

Chagatay

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

References

{{reflist Assimilation (linguistics)