ABSTRACT
Vowel harmony is a characteristic feature of the Uralic and Altaic (and also the Chukchi-Kamchatkan) languages, spoken over a large part of Western and Central Eurasia. It has been debated for a long time whether the existence of vowel harmony in these languages is an indication that they are genetically related or if it is due to areal convergence. Some early researchers, such as Adam (1874: 69–70), thought that the only reason why these languages share the property of having vowel harmony is that it is inherited from a common proto-language, so that Uralic and Altaic are genetically related.
