A Typology of Consonant Agreement as Correspondence

This article presents a typology of consonant harmony or LONG DISTANCE CONSONANT AGREEMENT that is analyzed as arising through correspondence relations between consonants rather than feature spreading. The model covers a range of agreement patterns (nasal, laryngeal, liquid, coronal, dorsal) and offers several advantages. Similarity of agreeing consonants is central to the typology and is incorporated directly into the constraints driving correspondence. Agreement by correspondence without feature spreading captures the neutrality of intervening segments, which neither block nor undergo. Case studies of laryngeal agreement and nasal agreement are presented, demonstrating the model's capacity to capture varying degrees of similarity crosslinguistically.