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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.
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 ...
In vowel harmony, a vowel's phonetic features are often influenced by those of a preceding vowel. For example, most Finnish case markers come in two forms, with /ɑ/ (written a ) and /æ/ (written ä ), depending on whether the preceding vowel is back or front.
Suffixes are attached to the end of a word root to add meaning such as condition, disease process, or procedure. In the process of creating medical terminology, certain rules of language apply. These rules are part of language mechanics called linguistics. The word root is developed to include a vowel sound following the term to add a smoothing ...
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.
Palatal harmony, also called palatovelar harmony, is a type of vowel harmony that manifests in forcing agreement between vowels that are either neighboring or in the same word regarding their place of articulation-- specifically the difference between the palatal-articulated front vowels and the back vowels which are articulated closer to the velum.
Mulcaster also formulated the rule that a double letter, when final, indicated a short vowel in English, while the absence of doubling and the presence of silent e made the vowel long. In modern English, this rule is most prominent in its effects on the written "a" series: gal, gall, gale (/ɡæl, /ɡɔːl/, /ɡeɪl/).
Trisyllabic laxing is a process which has occurred at various periods in the history of English: The earliest occurrence of trisyllabic laxing occurred in late Old English and caused stressed long vowels to become shortened before clusters of two consonants when two or more syllables followed.