VOWEL HARMONY AND RELATED ASSIMILATORY PROCESSES IN UYGHUR: PHONOLOGICAL VARIATIONS BETWEEN THE STANDARD LANGUAGE AND DIALECTAL FORMS

Abstract

Modern Uyghur exhibits a complex system of vowel harmony characterized by interactions of backness, height, and rounding. While backness harmony underlies the canonical vowel harmony rules, non-canonical patterns emerge involving the high unrounded vowel /i/—a neutral phoneme that orthographically lacks a [+back] counterpart and consonant triggers. This thesis investigates these processes through a dialect-sensitive approach integrating phonetic and phonological analysis of Uyghur data. The study first examines the historical formation of Modern Standard Uyghur (SU) as an orthographic compilation of multiple subdialects. Although dialectal differences in Uyghur do not cause mutual intelligibility breakdowns, they produce notable phonetic and phonological variation. SU alone fails to capture these divergences, underscoring the importance of dialectology in Uyghur phonological research.

Previous analyses have treated non-canonical vowel harmony as lexically conditioned exceptions. In contrast, this thesis adopts a feature-geometric framework (drawing on Halle et al.’s (2000) Revised Articulator Theory) wherein adjacent consonants bear secondary articulations that influence vowel allophony. This approach accounts for harmony processes affecting both vowel phonemes and their allophones. The analysis also addresses coda clusters: it proposes that the phoneme /i/ is specified as [+RTR] in default where the feature [RTR] spreads when [back] does not. This suggests an underlying [RTR] (tongue-root) harmony system operating subordinately when the higher-ranked [back] harmony fails to predict vowel alternations, which could be explained by a revised contrastive feature hierarchy for Uyghur: [low] ≈ [labial] > [back] > [RTR].

The thesis includes a preliminary acoustic analysis of a Yarkand Subdialect speaker’s vowel space, revealing discrepancies between perceptual judgments and instrumental measurements. Fieldwork constraints highlight the influence of orthography on dialectal phonology. These findings reinforce the need for an integrated approach combining phonology, phonetics, and sociolinguistics in future linguistic inquiries of Modern Uyghur. Ultimately, the study challenges the notion of Modern Uyghur as a uniform phonological entity. It demonstrates that Uyghur vowel harmony is an evolving system shaped by dialectal contrasts reflecting both diachronic change and synchronic variation. Bridging theoretical phonology with experimental data, this work contributes to an all-rounded understanding of Uyghur phonology by emphasizing dialectal sensitivity in linguistic analysis