Consonant harmony

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Historical sound change

General

Metathesis
Dissimilation
Fortition

Lenition (weakening)

Sonorization (voicing)
Spirantization (assibilation)
Rhotacism
Debuccalization (loss of place)

Elision (loss)

Apheresis (initial)
Syncope (medial)
Apocope (final)
Haplology (similar syllables)
Fusion
Cluster reduction
Compensatory lengthening

Epenthesis (addition)

Anaptyxis (vowel)
Excrescence (consonant)
Prosthesis (initial)
Paragoge (final)
Unpacking
Vowel breaking

Assimilation

Coarticulation
Palatalization (before front vowels)
Labialization (before rounded vowels)
Final devoicing (before silence)
Vowel harmony
Consonant harmony

Cheshirisation (trace remains)

Nasalization
Tonogenesis
Floating tone

Sandhi (boundary change)

Crasis (contraction)
Liaison, linking R
Consonant mutation
Tone sandhi
Hiatus

Consonant harmony is a type of "long-distance" phonological assimilation akin to the similar assimilatory process involving vowels, i.e. vowel harmony.

[edit] Examples

There are several kinds of consonant harmony. One of the most commonly found, called sibilant harmony, requires all the sibilants of the word to belong either to the anterior class (s-like sounds) or the nonanterior class (sh-like sounds). Such patterns are found in Chumash, Navajo, Western Apache, Kinyarwanda, and elsewhere. For example, in Western Apache the verbal prefix si- is usually an alveolar fricative, as can be seen in the words below:

siką̄ą̄ "a container and its contents are in position"
sitłēēd "mushy matter is in position"
siyį̄į̄ "a load/pack/burden is in position"
sinéʼ "three or more flexible objects are in position"
siłāā "a slender flexible object is in position"
siʼą̄ą̄ "a solid roundish object is in position"
sitsooz "a flat flexible object is in position"
siziid "liquid matter is in position"

However, when si- occurs before a verb stem that starts with a post-alveolar affricate, the si- assimilates to the alveolar place of articulation (becoming shi-):

shijaa "three or more solid rigid inanimate objects are in position"

Various Austronesian languages exhibit consonant harmony among the liquid consonants, with [r] assimilating at a distance to [l] or vice versa. Likewise, in Sanskrit, [n] is retroflexed to [ɳ] if certain consonants precede it in the same word, even at a distance.

Guaraní shows nasal harmony, by which certain affixes have alternative forms according to whether the root includes a nasal (vowel or consonant) or not. For instance, the reflexive prefix is realized as oral je- when preceding an oral stem like juka "kill", but as nasal ñe- when preceding a nasal stem like nupã "hit", where the ã makes the stem nasal.

Some Finnish speakers find it hard to pronounce both 'b' and 'p' in foreign words (e.g. pubi), so they voice (bubi) or devoice (pupi) the entire word.