Xinkan Vowel Harmony Revisited

The Xinkan languages have been described as exhibiting a unique type of vowel harmony within the Mesoamerican linguistic area. However, these analyses have not considered the phonologically complementary distribution of vowels, leading to proposals suggesting that two separate constraints are needed: lexical stipulation within morphemes and harmonic assimilation between morphemes. However, a more unified analysis of Xinkan vowel harmony is possible–one involving only four contrastive vowels and an extrasegmental feature [–high], rather than the six vowels posited previously.