Nasal Harmony or No Nasal Harmony?

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LinguoFranco
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Nasal Harmony or No Nasal Harmony?

Post by LinguoFranco »

Hello, I'm new! [:D]

My current conlang uses nasal harmony so that anytime a vowel comes right after a nasal consonant, it is nasalized along with all succeeding vowels. The nasalization only stops at a consonant that is not a nasal or liquid, and therefore no vowel coming after the blocker are nasalized.

I have name the language Namasan (Idk how to type diacritics or IPA on this site) and the first two /a/s are nasalized while the last one isn't.

The only issue I am having is that I want the word 'mizhuk' (the 'zh' is pronounced as a voiced 'th' and the 'u' is the same as the Japanese 'u') but according to the grammar rules, the /i/ will have to be nasalized, but I don't want it to be nasalized in that particular word. This would be inconsistent with the nasal harmony rule. I know many IRL languages have exceptions and irregularities, but I cannot seem to justify this one.
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Micamo
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Re: Vowel Harmony or No Vowel Harmony?

Post by Micamo »

LinguoFranco wrote:The only issue I am having is that I want the word 'mizhuk' (the 'zh' is pronounced as a voiced 'th' and the 'u' is the same as the Japanese 'u') but according to the grammar rules, the /i/ will have to be nasalized, but I don't want it to be nasalized in that particular word. This would be inconsistent with the nasal harmony rule. I know many IRL languages have exceptions and irregularities, but I cannot seem to justify this one.
If you *really* need an explanation, say that it's a loanword and that loans don't consistently apply the nasalization rule.
Also, it seems to me that the only languages AFAIK that contain vowel harmony are agglutinative and polysynthetic languages. Could harmony work in fusional and isolating languages?
Yes, it can and does.
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LinguoFranco
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Re: Vowel Harmony or No Vowel Harmony?

Post by LinguoFranco »

Micamo wrote:
LinguoFranco wrote:The only issue I am having is that I want the word 'mizhuk' (the 'zh' is pronounced as a voiced 'th' and the 'u' is the same as the Japanese 'u') but according to the grammar rules, the /i/ will have to be nasalized, but I don't want it to be nasalized in that particular word. This would be inconsistent with the nasal harmony rule. I know many IRL languages have exceptions and irregularities, but I cannot seem to justify this one.
If you *really* need an explanation, say that it's a loanword and that loans don't consistently apply the nasalization rule.
Also, it seems to me that the only languages AFAIK that contain vowel harmony are agglutinative and polysynthetic languages. Could harmony work in fusional and isolating languages?
Yes, it can and does.
So I don't "really" need a justification. I guess it could be an exception or an irregular. I don't think it will be a loanword as it looks and sounds pronoun-y to me.
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qwed117
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Re: Vowel Harmony or No Vowel Harmony?

Post by qwed117 »

LinguoFranco wrote:
Micamo wrote:
LinguoFranco wrote:The only issue I am having is that I want the word 'mizhuk' (the 'zh' is pronounced as a voiced 'th' and the 'u' is the same as the Japanese 'u') but according to the grammar rules, the /i/ will have to be nasalized, but I don't want it to be nasalized in that particular word. This would be inconsistent with the nasal harmony rule. I know many IRL languages have exceptions and irregularities, but I cannot seem to justify this one.
If you *really* need an explanation, say that it's a loanword and that loans don't consistently apply the nasalization rule.
Also, it seems to me that the only languages AFAIK that contain vowel harmony are agglutinative and polysynthetic languages. Could harmony work in fusional and isolating languages?
Yes, it can and does.
So I don't "really" need a justification. I guess it could be an exception or an irregular. I don't think it will be a loanword as it looks and sounds pronoun-y to me.
Pronouns are relatively "strong" in regards to linguistic change. You can just say it's a throwback to a time where the nasal harmony didn't occur, just like how our pronominal case is from the Old English casing system
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Lao Kou
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Re: Vowel Harmony or No Vowel Harmony?

Post by Lao Kou »

LinguoFranco wrote:The only issue I am having is that I want the word 'mizhuk' (the 'zh' is pronounced as a voiced 'th' and the 'u' is the same as the Japanese 'u') but according to the grammar rules, the /i/ will have to be nasalized, but I don't want it to be nasalized in that particular word. This would be inconsistent with the nasal harmony rule. I know many IRL languages have exceptions and irregularities, but I cannot seem to justify this one.
So much Sturm und Drang and crise de cœur over one word? If nasalizing /i/ feels wrong to you here, then don't do it. You can always go back later and diachronically justify it with when creatures crawled out of the watery depths and became land-dwellers speaking your lang.
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