Height Harmony

Abstract This chapter examines height harmony across languages. It is shown that alternations between high and mid vowels are robustly attested, where languages display both high-vowel lowering and mid-vowel raising. Alternations between mid and low vowels are less common; further, they seem to be confined to mid-vowel lowering, with low-vowel raising largely unattested. It is further shown that although most languages have more than two heights in their vowel inventories, height harmony patterns are confined to one-step changes (e.g., high-to-mid, *high-to-low), suggesting that a single feature is implicated. In some languages, [ATR] or [tense] is needed to support contrasts on the aperture dimension, but these features are shown to interact with, rather than pattern as, height features. Some consequences for feature theory of the asymmetries observed are discussed—for example, that height harmony does not sanction the feature [–low], or its equivalent.