Transparency, strict locality, and targeted constraints

The claim that feature assimilation is strictly local, applying only between adjacent segments, appears to be contradicted by languages in which, descriptively speaking, vowel harmony passes through so-called ‘transparent’ vowels without affecting them. We illustrate this apparent contradiction with the pattern of vowel harmony and transparency found in Wolof (Niger-Congo). As described by Ka (1988), Archangeli & Pulleyblank (1994), and Pulleyblank (1996), among others, this language has a progressive (left-to-right) process of [ ATR] (Advanced Tongue Root) harmony. Thus the vowel of the suffix -nnn surfaces as [– ATR] after a [–ATR] root vowel in (1a), and as [+ ATR] after a [+ATR] root vowel in (1b).

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