its non- counterparts or with or non- counterparts. For example, the vowel in the aorist suffix appears as when it follows a in the root, but when it follows all other vowels it appears as . Similarly, the vowel in the nondirective gerundial suffix appears as when it follows a in the root; otherwise it appears as . In addition to the harmony found in suffixes, there is a harmony restriction on word stems where in stems with more than one syllable all vowels are required to be of the same lip rounding and tongue height dimensions. For example, a stem must contain all high rounded vowels or all low rounded vowels, etc. This restriction is further complicated by (i) long high vowels being lowered and (ii) an epenthetic vowel which does not harmonize with stem vowels. Sumerian There is some evidence for vowel harmony according to vowel height or ATR in the prefix i3/e- in inscriptions from pre-Sargonic Lagash (the specifics of the pattern have led a handful of scholars to postulate not only an phoneme, but even an and, most recently, an ) Many cases of partial or complete assimilation of the vowel of certain prefixes and suffixes to one in the adjacent syllable are reflected in writing in some of the later periods, and there is a noticeable though not absolute tendency for disyllabic stems to have the same vowel in both syllables. What appears to be vowel contraction in hiatus (*/aa/, */ia/, */ua/ > a, */ae/ > a, */ue/ > u, etc.) is also very common. Other languages Vowel harmony occurs to some degree in many other languages, such as Several dialects of Arabic (see imala) including: Palestinian Arabic Iraqi Arabic Lebanese Arabic Akan languages (tongue root position) Assamese Australian Aboriginal languages Jingulu Warlpiri Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (vowel harmony of one particular timbre across all vowels of a word) Several Bantu languages such as: Standard Lingala (height) Kgalagadi (height) Malila (height) Phuthi (right-to-left and left-to-right) Shona Southern Sotho (right-to-left and left-to-right) Northern Sotho (right-to-left and left-to-right) Tswana (right-to-left and left-to-right) Bezhta Bengali Some Chadic languages, such as Buwal Chukchi Coeur d'Alene (tongue root position and height) Coosan languages Dusun languages Iberian languages Astur-Leonese Galician and Portuguese dialects Catalan/Valencian Eastern Andalusian Spanish Murcian Spanish Igbo (tongue root position) Italo-Romance languages: several Swiss Italian dialects (including total vowel harmony systems). Japanese language - in some of the Kansai dialects.