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First, prefixes and suffixes, most of which are derived from ancient Greek or classical Latin, have a droppable vowel, usually -o-. As a general rule, this vowel almost always acts as a joint-stem to connect two consonantal roots (e.g. arthr-+ -o-+ -logy = arthrology), but generally, the -o-is dropped when connecting to a vowel-stem (e.g. arthr ...
The basic rule is that words including at least one back vowel get back vowel suffixes (karba – in(to) the arm), while words excluding back vowels get front vowel suffixes (kézbe – in(to) the hand). Single-vowel words which have only the neutral vowels (i, í or é) are unpredictable, but e takes a front-vowel suffix.
A silent e is usually dropped when a suffix beginning with a vowel is added to a word, for example: cope to coping, trade to tradable, tense to tension, captive to captivate, plague to plaguing, secure to security, create to creator, etc. However, this is inconsistently applied, as in the case of liveable. In the case of the "-ment" suffix ...
Before a vowel-initial word in non-syncopating dialects, the first-person prefix takes the form /nid-/, and the initial vowel /o-/ of the noun is lengthened by a regular rule to /oo-/. In Ottawa the prefix has the form /nd-/, and the vowel of the noun is also /oo-/, as in (b) in the table below.
The vowel alternation may involve more than just a change in vowel quality. In Athabaskan languages, such as Navajo, verbs have series of stems where the vowel alternates (sometimes with an added suffix) indicating a different tense-aspect. Navajo vowel ablaut, depending on the verb, may be a change in vowel, vowel length, nasality, and/or tone.
Vowel harmony affects inflectional suffixes and derivational suffixes, which have two forms, one for use with back vowels, and the other with front vowels. Compare, for example, the following pair of abstract nouns: hallit u s 'government' (from hallita , 'to reign') versus terve y s 'health' (from terve , healthy).
The first row of the following table shows how uncontested cognates relate to reconstructed PIE stems with e-grade or zero-grade roots, followed by e grade or zero grade of the suffix *–w-. The remaining rows show how the ablaut pattern of other cognates is preserved if the stems are presumed to include the suffixes * h₁ , * h₂ , and * h₃ .
Another example can be seen in a language that has vowel harmony (like Turkish): [15]: 9 the vowels within a given word share the same quality, so a word boundary is likely to occur whenever the vowel quality changes. Nevertheless, not all languages have such convenient phonetic rules, and even those that do present the occasional exceptions.