WebAnswer (1 of 6): Ah a very interesting question indeed! Panu has already provided cases of the “migration” of postpositions into case endings. As to why some languages seem to loose inflexions over time comes from the fact that many inflexions are postfixed and unstressed. The “natural laziness... WebFrom a functional point of view, it can be hypothesized that vowels come to harmonize as a result of low-level co-articulatory effects (between vowels in adjacent syllables across …

Vowel harmony - Wikipedia

WebThe Old English fricatives /f, θ, s/ had voiceless and voiced allophones, the voiced forms occurring in certain environments, such as between vowels. In Early Middle English, partly … Webneighboring Bantu languages that have “borrowed” them), the phonological phenomena found in African languages are duplicated elsewhere on the globe, though not always in as concentrated a fashion. The vast majority of African languages are tonal, and perhaps most also have vowel harmony (especially the type known as “ATR harmony”). shania geiss 2023

Why do languages seem to lose their grammatical inflexions

WebIf high-vowel deletion occurred first, the result would presumably be an unattested **nytte. A similar loss of -(i)j-occurred in the other West Germanic languages, although after the … WebIn languages with vowel harmony, only certain classes of vowels may co-occur within a given domain, often the word. Most often, this is manifested in morphophonological alternations. As an example, the backness of suffixes in Turkish is generally determined by the backness of the initial-syllable vowel. WebAs mentioned above, many African languages, such as Maasai, have systems of vowel harmony based on tongue root position. That is illustrated here with the Fante dialect of Akan, which has fifteen vowels: five +ATR vowels, five −ATR vowels, and five nasal vowels. There are two harmonization rules that govern the vowels that may co-occur in a word: shania geiss fotoserie