Influence of Vowel Harmony in an Artificial Language System

I elicited speech errors by experiments and analysed §them to see what they reveal about vowel harmony§(VH). The basic question is whether VH helps Turkish§speakers to learn an artificial language system. The§question of whether the subjects learned VH was§tested in three ways: first, the diversity and§quantity of their speech errors; second, by the test§phase and third by analyzing the words subjects§remembered. The results revealed that subjects§preserved the system they were trained on even in§their speech errors. There were certain §patterns in the speech errors of both harmony and§disharmony subjects. This underlies the finding that§as long as there is a pattern (whether harmony or§disharmony) in the artificial language system,§subjects were able to learn it. The backness/rounding§harmony subjects were more successful than other§groups. It was observed that height harmony was more§difficult for Turkish subjects compared to§backness/rounding harmony. But the results of the§mixed condition subjects reveal that even vowel§disharmony was easier than a lack of pattern. The§results point out to the fact that VH is a property§that facilitates both production and perception.