Vowel Harmony Finite State Transducer Project

This project aims to computationally model locality in vowel-harmony patterns among languages. Many of these languages and their vowel-harmony patterns are described in Andrew Nevins' book Locality in Vowel Harmony or Rachel Walker and Sharon Rose's Harmony Systems.

This project is the collaborative summer project of Travis Herringshaw and Ahmed Ishtiaque, under the supervision of Professor Jane Chandlee at Haverford College.

This is a short introduction to the project. A more detailed documentation can be found here

So far, the following vowel-harmony patterns have been recorded:

Kisa applicative suffix Vlɑ
Kisa reversative suffix Vlɑ
Sibe vowel rounding harmony
Tuvan backness harmony
Uyghur backness harmony
Uyghur plural suffix -lVr
Uyghur dative suffix -ʁV
Halh (Mongolic) rounding harmony
Jingulu nominal root with non-neuter gender suffix
Jingulu adjectivial root with non-neuter gender suffix
Jingulu verbal root with subject agreement-marking suffix
Jingulu verbal root with motion-imperative suffix
Jingulu verbal root with negative imperative suffix
Turkish palatal and rounding vowel harmony
Finnish palatal (front/back) vowel harmony
Classical Mongolian palatal vowel harmony
Kalmyk (Oirat) harmony
Khalkha Mongolian harmony
Dagur Mongolian harmony
Tunica harmony
Yoruba ATR harmony
Igbo ATR harmony
Diola-Fogny (Jola-Fonyi) ATR harmony
Kalenjin ATR harmony
Asturian Lena (Romance) height harmony with inflectional suffixes
Pasiego vowel harmony (metaphony, raising, and centralization)
Pulaar dialect of Fula (Niger-Congo) ATR harmony
Maasai (Eastern Nilotic) ATR harmony
Kashaya (Pomoan) translaryngeal harmony
Standard Hungarian palatal harmony of alternating suffixes
Nawuri (North Guang) ATR harmony
Kinendeule (Rufiji) height harmony for verbal extensions
Chingoni (Rufiji) height harmony for verbal extensions

Usage

This repository provides a command-line tool that you can interact with and use the transducers that generate IPA equivalents of words in the above VH patterns.

To run the tool, you need Python 3 installed on your computer.

Once you have that installed, you can clone this repository and run the tool using your favorite python 3 interpreter (IDLE, the python3 command, etc.). For example, from command line, the commands would look like this:

  $ git clone https://github.com/ishtiaque06/vh-fst.git
  $ cd vh-fst
  $ python3 app.py

This will present you with an interactive command-line tool that you can choose the VH pattern you want to work with, and then input words to check what the expected output might be. The command-line tool looks like this:

$ python3 app.py
Welcome to the Vowel Harmony FST Command-line Interface.
This program lets you choose a vowel harmony pattern from several and
attempts to give you the correct phonetic representation of valid words
in the pattern of your choosing.

These are patterns that this program supports at the moment:
1. Kisa applicative suffix Vlɑ
2. Kisa reversative suffix Vlɑ
3. Sibe vowel rounding harmony
4. Tuvan backness harmony
5. Uyghur backness harmony
6. Uyghur plural suffix -lVr
7. Uyghur dative suffixʁV
8. Halh (Mongolic) rounding harmony
9. Jingulu nominal root with non-neuter gender suffix
10. Jingulu adjectivial root with non-neuter gender suffix
11. Jingulu verbal root with subject agreement-marking suffix
12. Jingulu verbal root with motion-imperative suffix
13. Jingulu verbal root with negative imperative suffix
==============================================================
Vowel Harmony FST Command-line Interface for Phonologists
==============================================================
Select a vowel harmony pattern (Ex: 1)
Enter q to quit, l to list all patterns
>>> _

This tool accepts space-delimited strings, possibly with suffixes for providing the right output for each word. One cool thing is that if you have access to Unicode IPA characters, you can use those to represent your words as well. Added to that, the output words are also represented in IPA. To make things relatively easier for you, we provide a set of variables you can use to represent IPA characters, as provided below:

Consonants. Format: Place_Manner_Voicing;

   Place:
       L=labial, LD=labiodental, D=dental, A=alveolar, R=retroflex,
       PA=postalveolar, P=palatal, V=velar, U=uvular, PH=pharyngeal, G=glottal;

   Manner:
       P=plosive, N=nasal, TR=trill, TF=tap/flap, F=fricative,
       LF=lateral fricative, A=approximant, LA=lateral approximant;

   Voicing:
       VL=voiceless, V=voiced
R_P_VL: ʈ
R_P_V: ɖ
P_P_V: %
G_P_VL: ʔ
LD_N_V: ɱ
R_N_V: ɳ
P_N_V: ɲ
V_N_V: ŋ
A_TF_V: ɾ
R_TF_V: ɽ
L_F_VL: ɸ
L_F_V: β
D_F_VL: θ
D_F_V: ð
R_F_VL: ʂ
R_F_V: ʐ
P_F_VL: ç
P_F_V: ʝ
V_F_V: ɣ
U_F_VL: χ
U_F_V: ʁ
PH_F_VL: ħ
PH_F_V: ʕ
G_F_V: ɦ
A_LF_VL: ɬ
A_LF_V: ɮ
PA_LF_VL: ʃ
PA_LF_V: ʒ
LD_A_V: ʋ
A_A_V: ɹ
R_A_V: ɻ
V_A_V: ɰ
R_LA_V: ɭ
P_LA_V: ʎ

Vowels. Format: front/back_high/low_rounding_tense;

   front/back: F=+front,-back, B=-front,+back, C=-front,-back;

   high/low: H=+high,-low, M=-high,-low, L=-high,+low;

   rounding: R=rounded, U=unrounded;

   tense: T=+tense, NT=lax
C_H_U_T: ɨ
C_H_R_T: ʉ
B_H_U_T: ɯ
B_H_R_NT: ʊ
F_M_R_T: ø
C_M_U_T: ɘ
C_M_R_T: ɵ
B_M_U_T: ɤ
schwa: ə
F_M_U_NT: ɛ
F_M_R_NT: œ
C_M_U_NT: ɜ
C_M_R_NT: ɞ
B_M_U_NT: ʌ
B_M_R_NT: ɔ
F_L_UR_T: æ
C_L_R_T: ɐ
C_L_R_NT: ɶ
B_L_U_NT: ɑ
B_L_R_NT: ɒ

For example, if you want to test the word tsomilɑ, you can input either of the following strings to the tool:

t s o m i l ɑ, i.e. the unicode representation
t s o m i l B_L_U_NT

where B_L_U_NT stands for ɑ, the "Back Low Unrounded Not Tense (Lax)" vowel.

Sources Used

About

FST to process strings and determine vowel-harmony pattens in languages

MIT License

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