The Emergence of Vowel Harmony in Armenian Dialects: Turkic Influence, Endogeny, or Both?
Many non-standard varieties of modern Armenian have vowel harmony, and it has been assumed this was acquired through contact with Turkic. Surveying the synchrony and typology of Armenian vowel harmony, the historical changes that could have produced it, and new data on the origins of backness and rounding harmony in Oghuz, the authors find Turkish influence but reject a straightforward copying account: Armenian and Turkish harmony differ too much. They argue harmony arose from a mix of internal and external factors: vowel shifts in certain Armenian dialects plus universal biases created the preconditions by the eleventh century AD, before Turkic speakers arrived in the Armenian homeland.