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Concept

Metaphony

In historical linguistics, metaphony is a class of sound change in which one vowel in a word is influenced by another in a process of assimilation. The sound change is normally "long-distance" in that the vowel triggering the change may be separated from the affected vowel by several consonants, or sometimes even by several syllables. For more discussion, see the article on vowel harmony. There are two types: Progressive (or left-to-right) metaphony, in which a vowel towards the beginning of a word influences a subsequent vowel. Regressive (or right-to-left) metaphony, in which a vowel towards the end of the word influences a preceding vowel. Metaphony is closely related to some other linguistic concepts: Vowel harmony is sometimes used synonymously with metaphony. Usually, however, "vowel harmony" refers specifically to a synchronic process operating in a particular language, normally requiring all vowels in a word to agree in a particular feature (e.g. vowel height or vowel backness). Most commonly, the triggering vowel is in the first syllable of the word (i.e., this is a type of progressive metaphony), as in Turkish, Finnish or Hungarian. In some cases, however, the triggering vowel is in the last syllable, typically a suffix, as in many varieties of Andalusian Spanish. Umlaut refers to regressive metaphony, usually specifically of a diachronic type operating in the history of a language. The term "umlaut" is found especially in the Germanic languages (see Germanic umlaut). In some other languages, other terms are used instead for the same process (e.g. affection in Old Irish, simply metaphony in the Romance languages).

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Related concepts (3)
I-mutation
I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or i/j-umlaut) is a type of sound change in which a back vowel is fronted or a front vowel is raised if the following syllable contains i, ī or j (a voiced palatal approximant, sometimes called yod, the sound of English in yes). It is a category of regressive metaphony, or vowel harmony. The term is usually used by scholars of the Germanic languages: it is particularly important in the history of the Germanic languages because inflectional suffixes with an /i/ or /j/ led to many vowel alternations that are still important in the morphology of the languages.
Assimilation (phonology)
Assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. A common type of phonological process across languages, assimilation can occur either within a word or between words. It occurs in normal speech but becomes more common in more rapid speech. In some cases, assimilation causes the sound spoken to differ from the normal pronunciation in isolation, such as the prefix in- of English input pronounced with phonetic [m] rather than [n].
Vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning that the affected vowels do not need to be immediately adjacent, and there can be intervening segments between the affected vowels. Generally one vowel will trigger a shift in other vowels, either progressively or regressively, within the domain, such that the affected vowels match the relevant feature of the trigger vowel.

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