TY - JOUR AU - McCollum, Adam G. AU - Essegbey, James PY - 2020/04/16 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Initial prominence and progressive vowel harmony in Tutrugbu JF - Phonological Data and Analysis JA - PDA VL - 2 IS - 3 SE - Research Articles DO - 10.3765/pda.v2art3.14 UR - https://phondata.org/index.php/pda/article/view/14 SP - 1–37 AB - <p>One of the key elements of constraint-based formalisms is their ability to derive a variety of effects from the interaction of general constraints. As for vowel harmony, one persistent question within Optimality Theory is how to encode directionality – directly through directional harmony-driving constraints, or indirectly through asymmetric prominence patterns. This paper presents a typologically unusual case of progressive harmony triggered by prefixes in Tutrugbu. We compare analyzing harmony as purely progressive in a direct sense with an indirect analysis that motivates harmony from initial-syllable prominence. Based on both language-internal and typological evidence, we argue that the prominence-based analysis is superior. We generalize to suggest that progressive harmony should always be reducible to independent factors, and as a result, formalized indirectly through prominence.</p> ER -