# Vowel harmony in words with neutral vowel stems



## Maabdreo

Hei,

As noted on Wikipedia:



> Some Finnish words whose stems contain only neutral vowels exhibit an alternating pattern in terms of vowel harmony when inflected or forming new words through derivation. Examples include _meri_ "sea", _meressä_ "in the sea" (inessive), but _merta_ (partitive), not *_mertä_; _veri_ "blood", _verestä_ "from the blood" (elative), but _verta_ (partitive), not *_vertä_; _pelätä_ "to be afraid", but _pelko_ "fear", not *_pelkö_; _kipu_ "pain", but _kipeä_ "sore", not *_kipea_.



I know there may be no answer here, but does anyone have thoughts on why this happens? The _pelätä_/_pelko_ pattern seems quite regular (_hiihtää/hiihto, lentää/lento, kestää/kesto _etc.) Why not _pelkö, hiihtö, lentö, _etc, which would be consistent with the usual pattern of adding front vowels to stems with only neutral vowels?


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## DrWatson

Maabdreo said:


> Why not _pelkö, hiihtö, lentö, _etc, which would be consistent with the usual pattern of adding front vowels to stems with only neutral vowels?


The reason here is historical: /ö/ didn't occur in non-initial syllables in Late Proto-Finnic, which was the common stage of all modern day Baltic-Finnic languages. It developed later but only in words where it was essential to vowel harmony like _näkö _(< *_näko_; the /o/ has been retained in Votic, e.g. _čäko _(< *_käko_, cf. Finnish _käkö_) 'cuckoo bird'). Neutral vowels can occur with back vowels so the non-initial /o/ was retained in words like _hiihto_, _lento_, _kesto_, _kiitos _etc.

I'm not 100 % sure about _verta_, though. _Veri _belongs to the oldest Uralic word stock, so _verta _might be a vestige of the older, pre-vowel harmony system. _Meri _is a newer loanword, so the partitive is probably an analogy from _verta_.


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## Maabdreo

That explains it, thank you Dr. Watson!


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## Marko55

I was thinking of the words 'merta' and 'verta'. We can look at the non-inflected words that have the pattern:
(er) + (1-2 consonants) + a/ä/o/ö/u/y, so we have e.g.:

(the abbreviation 'SSK' stands for www.suomisanakirja.fi)

herja (SSK: Germanic loanword)
kerma
kerta (SSK: Baltic loanword)
terva (SSK: Baltic loanword)

kerho
perho
verho (SSK: Finnish/Volga: werca)

hertta (SSK: Germanic loanword)
terttu
herkku
serkku
verkko (SSK: Germanic loanword)
herkkä (SSK: related to Northern Sami language: 'hearki')

So, most of these words have back vowels at the end of the word, just like mer-ta/ver-ta. The adjective 'herkkä' is the only word with a front vowel that occurred to me. Compare also the Finnish names 'Merja' and 'Kerkko'.


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