Vowel Harmony in Kindendeule and Chingoni Languages of Tanzania

Abstract

This article describes vowel height harmony in Kindendeule and Chingoni, Bantu languages spoken in southern Tanzania.  Kindendeule  has a seven vowel syste/i,e,E,a, ... , o, u/and  Chingoni has five vowels: /i,a,...,u/.  Both languages exhit vowel height harmony described by Hyman (1999) as asymmetric.  There are three vowels /i,a,u/that appear in the –VC-strucure of verbal extensions.  Data from the two languages show that both front and back vowels of the roots lower the high front vowel of the suffix, as i –e/e.oC_, and i E/E,...C_.  However, with suffixal/u/, only the back vowels lower it, as u-o/oC_and u-o/o C_.  The low vowel/a/ neither triggers nor is it affected by vowel harmony.  As in other Bantu languages, the domain of vowel harmony is the stem.  Inflections, both prefixes as suffixes, as well as deverbal affixes are not affected vowel harmony.