Vowel harmony
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Both Turkish and Azerbaijani, along with most other Turkic languages exhibit vowel harmony. See the following table of inflections for the word pivə, "beer" in Azerbaijani. Underscore indicates a vowel that has been "harmonised".
| Azerbaijani | Gloss |
|---|---|
| pivə | beer |
| pivəler | beers |
| pivəlerim | my beers |
| pivədən | from beer |
| pivələrdən | from beers |
If the stem had ended with another vowel than ə, the underscored vowel would differ as well (e.g. a and a instead of ə and ə).
HFST has a handy way of treating this phenomena. Represent the harmonising vowel as e.g. {A} (an archiphoneme that represents e.g. the set of a or ə) in the suffix, and use a two-level rule to instantiate it to a specific vowel when it's attached to the stem.
