Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) A featural paradox in Votic harmony (draft version, final version published in NLLT) Lev Blumenfeld and Ida Toivonen Abstract In this paper we present a novel argument against strict locality in vowel harmony: a vowel’s feature may have a double identity, active in one process and neu- tral in another. Such is the behavior of [back] in Votic [i]. It is invisible to harmony, while simultaneously triggering an assimilation process. We argue that no feature- sharing account of this phenomenon is plausible, including the relatively powerful extension of Span Theory that permits vowels in a harmonic span to remain unasso- ciated (and unharmonized) with the span’s head. We offer instead an account based on the Agreement-By-Correspondence approach to long-distance assimilation. Keywords harmony · transparency · strict locality · Votic 1 Introduction The result of phonological assimilation can be represented in one of two ways, as fea- ture copying or as feature sharing. The feature-copying view assumes that the trigger and target bear different instances of the assimilating feature. Originally introduced in SPE, it was recently resurrected in proposals by Kiparsky and Pajusalu (2003) and Rose and Walker (2004). The feature-sharing view articulated by Goldsmith (1976) allowed the trigger and target to bear the same instance of the assimilating feature as a result of spreading. These ideas were integrated into generative thinking by autoseg- mental phonology, but they trace their pedigree to earlier ideas by Firth and Zellig Harris. See Anderson (1985,189–193) for an account of the history. (1) a. Feature copying b. Feature sharing [F] [F] A B [F] A B The authors’ names appear in alphabetical order. Their contributions to this work are equal.