Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 November 2002
Harmony is a phonological pattern in which a sequence of vowels and/or consonants must have the same specification for a particular feature, descriptively referred to as the harmonic feature. In the clear cases, whenever the harmonic feature occurs in a word, the expected manifestation of the harmony pattern is also encountered. For example, in Capanahua (Loos 1969) where [nasal] is the harmonic feature, a nasal consonant always shares nasality with a preceding sequence containing vowels, semivowels and/or laryngeals.