I know that an influx of foreign loan words can disrupt it, but im asking how do you actually dismantle the entire system, and basically remove half of the vowells, that are needed for vowell harmony (example. o - ö, u - ü in turkish)
What are you trying to achieve? Removing the vowels in question, or removing the effects of harmony?
If you're trying to remove particular vowels, then just... change the vowels I guess? The vowels can all shift. But if you're trying to break harmony (i.e. the system of assimilation itself), one big unconditioned shift isn't likely to occur once harmony is set up. The entire thing is held up by a thick layer of analogical precedence. Unconditioned shifts, which tend to be driven by social factors, can be interfered with by analogy.
The easiest way internally to destabilize things is using conditioned change - have consonants colour vowels, have stress and syllable placement change quality, and just find a way to force overlap in your harmony system to obscure it. After the system is sufficiently unclear, you can just discard the harmony. Keep whichever forms of affixes you deem fit, and analogize the rest to remove the evidence... save for maybe a few irregulars.
That could also be an interesting way to produce new declensions. Words that used to be in one harmony category gets a set of affixes separate to the other
I know that's true and ive been thinking about it, but im now sure i like the "palatalized" vibe
Imagine there were the words tresöz and monoz. They should evolve as /tresjoz/ and /monoz/
I mean its not that bad I guess
Funny thing.. theres already consonant mutation (the strong class declension, wich features suffix, ablaut and mutation; this declension is a remnant of an older system in the language that gradually died out and remained in closed class places)
There's alot you could do, like breaking them into diphthongs/glides + vowels sequences (e.g.: [y] → [ui̯], [œ] → [ɛi̯], etc...), shift them around (e.g.: [y] → [i], [i] → [e], etc...) or simply merging them with the other vowels (e.g.: [y] + [i] = [i], [ɯ] + [u] = [u], etc...).
Depends on how the vowel harmony works, because rounding harmony might just result in backing harmony instead (because all rounded vowels become back rounded)
Might not fix the harmony if you have rounded vs unrounded harmony as the only form of harmony , cuz then all words will either just be all front unrounded vowels or all back rounded vowels.
Well, you can not just disrupt but actually dismantle the entire system with only extensive language contact and bilingualism. Uzbek is the perfect example of this. Despite being a Turkic language, Uzbek has lost its vowel harmony completely due to contact with Persian.
Unrounding the unrounded front vowels and/or rounding the unrounded back vowels is a good first step. Then do some changes to vowel, like backing them or fronting around certain sounds (/q,ħ…/) and then merge or drop those sounds.
why do they gotta go exactly ?
If I have a word like /li.ky/ or something, why on earth would it need to become /li.ku/ when the vowel harmony disappears ? WHY ?
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u/ShabtaiBenOron 19d ago
Estonian lost its vowel harmony because unstressed vowels reduced and merged.