Abstract

Researches in Linguistics/3Vowel Harmony in Azeri Turkish of Moghan Region:An Auto-Segmental AnalysisB. AlaeiTabatabaei UniversityAbstractThe aim of this research is to study the vowel harmony in Azeri Turkish, spoken in Moghanregion. It focuses on the role of opaque units in the process. Based on the generative phonology'slinear approach, the vowel harmony is assumed to be the product of sequential assimilations ofvowels in the string, whereas auto-segmental phonology considers harmonic features as being at aseparate layer which is acting autonomously. For that, these features spread simultaneously on thewhole vowels in the string, unless an opaque unit intervenes and blocks it.The analysis of the data collected from the region under investigation (namely from Germi city)showed that the vowel harmony can be described, according to the principles offered by Katamba(1989), as follows: a) vowel harmony could be observed in the features [±back] and [±round], b)[±back] harmony applies on the whole vowels in the system, while [±round] applies only on[+high] vowels, c) opaque units which block harmony features' spreading are: 1) suffixes with a[+low] vowel in their underlying form and 2) the consonant /j/, occurring in the places other thanroot morpheme, which imposes [-back], [-round] and [+high] features on the preceding vowel,and this in turn influences the following vowels.Key Words: vowel harmony, Azeri Turkish, auto-segmental phonology, opaque phoneme alaei_inst@yahoo.com