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Vowel Phonemes of Nez Perce Vowel Harmony

Nez Perce exhibits a kind of vowel harmony that categorizes the five vowels as either dominant or recessive based on a property known as advanced tongue root. Vowels that are +ATR are recessive and vowels that are -ATR are dominant. If a morphological or dialectical process introduces a dominant vowel into a word, each recessive vowel will shift to its dominant counterpart.

/æ/ → /a/ (examples 1, 2, 3, 4)

/u/ → /ɔ/ (example 2)

/i/  → /i/

The phoneme i is considered both dominant and recessive though it is not neutral, acting in some cases as dominant, triggering a global shift to dominant vowels (example 5), and acting as recessive in others, maintaining the recessive vowels (example 4). The following examples illustrate the processes described above.
 * 1) tisqæʔ  'skunk'                      →     tisqaʔlaykin  'near a skunk'
 * 2) cæ:cæt  'raspberry'               →     caqa:t'ayn  'for a raspberry'
 * 3) su:yæ:pu  'the white people' →     sɔ:ya:pɔ  'the white people'
 * 4) pinumsæ 'I am asleep'          →     pinmiksæ  'I am going to sleep'
 * 5) ʔæ:y's  'be happy'                 →     ʔa:y'sliwaqsa  'I was happy for nothing'

Consonant Clusters

Nez Perce permits consonant clusters of up to four consonants in a word.

C1V(C2)(C3)(C4)(C5)

The constraints on which consonants can appear together and in what order differs for clusters that occur before a word juncture and intervocalically. The following charts from Aoki's 1965 Nez Perce Grammar illustrate these rules.

C = any consonant

V = any vowel

P’ = any glottalized stop

Cu = any unglottalized C

Pre-junctural Consonant Combination Chart Intervocalic Consonant Combination Chart