Erzya stem-internal vowel-consonant harmony: A new approach

Abstract

Although Erzya harmony is discussed as a kind of vowel harmony traditionally, suffix alternations show that there is a close interaction between consonants and vowels, therefore we should speak about a consonant-vowel harmony. This paper demonstrates that the palatalizedness of the consonants and the frontness of the vowels are also strongly connected inside stems: first syllable front vowels are quite rare after word-initial non-palatalized dentals but are dominant after palatalized ones; first syllable back vowels are dominantly followed by non-palatalized dentals, while the latter are very rare after front vowels.