Vowel Harmony in Spoken Lhasa Tibetan

Vowel Harmony in Spoken Lhasa Tibetan

Vowel-harmony alternations may be regarded as sandhi phenomena. The sandhi producing them in the spoken Tibetan of Lhasa is of two main types: (1) internal to the morphological unit, with consonantal interruption; and (2) external (across the boundaries of morphological units). Though the occurrence of vowel harmony beyond the boundaries of morphological units is marginal in Lhasa Tibetan, harmonic alternations appear extensively within morphological units. Our first aim, therefore, shall be to examine the workings of the harmonic process in morphology. Vowel harmony constitutes, for example, one of the formal marks of composition. There are, however, also other ways in which we recognize complex morphological units as opposed to syntactic sequences.