{{PIE notice}}
In linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, ablaut is a system of apophonyIn linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information .-Description:Apophony is...
(regular vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
variations) in Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
(PIE) and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languagesThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
. An example of ablaut in English is the strong verbIn the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of ablaut. In English, these are verbs like sing, sang, sung...
sing, sang, sung and its related noun song.
The term ablaut (from German ab- in the sense "down, reducing" + Laut "sound") was coined in the early 19th century by the linguist Jacob GrimmJacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was a German philologist, jurist and mythologist. He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law, the author of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy...
. However, the phenomenon itself was first observed more than 2,000 years earlier by the Sanskrit grammariansThe grammar of the Sanskrit language has a complex verbal system, rich nominal declension, and extensive use of compound nouns. It was studied and codified by Sanskrit grammarians from the later Vedic period , culminating in the Pāṇinian grammar of the 4th century BC.-Grammatical tradition:The...
and codified by Pāṇini in his Ashtadhyayi, where the terms {{IAST' means 'string' or 'a single thread or strand of a cord or twine'. In more abstract uses, it may mean 'a subdivision, species, kind, quality', or an operational principle or tendency....
and {{IAST' is a Sanskrit word meaning "growth" . In Panini's grammar, it is also a technical term for a group of long vowels. In Indo-European linguistics, it has become a term for the lengthened grade of the ablaut vowel gradation peculiar to the Indo-European languages...
were used to describe the phenomena now known as the full grade and lengthened grade, respectively. In the context of European languages, the phenomenon was first described in the early 18th century by the Dutch linguist Lambert ten Kate in his book Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de Nederduytsche ("Commonality between the Gothic languageGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
and Lower German (Dutch)Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
", 1710).
Preliminary considerations
Vowel gradation is any vowel difference between two related words (e.g. man and woman) or two forms of the same word (e.g. man and men). The difference need not be indicated in the spelling. There are many kinds of vowel gradation in English and other languages, and these are discussed generally in the article apophonyIn linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information .-Description:Apophony is...
. Some involve a variation in vowel length (quantitative gradation: man/woman), others in vowel colouring (qualitative gradation: man/men), and others the complete disappearance of a vowel (reduction to zero: could not → couldn't).
For the study of European languages, one of the most important instances of vowel gradation is the historical Indo-European phenomenon called ablaut, remnants of which can be seen in the English verbs ride, rode, ridden, or fly, flew, flown. For many purposes it is enough to note that these verbs are irregular, but understanding why they are irregular (and indeed why they are actually perfectly regular within their own terms) requires digging back into the grammar of the reconstructed proto-language.
Ablaut is the oldest and most extensive single source of vowel gradation in the Indo-European languages, and must be distinguished clearly from other forms of gradation which developed later, such as Germanic umlautIn linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term umlaut was originally coined and is used principally in connection with the study of the Germanic languages...
(man/men, goose/geese, long/length, think/thought) or the results of English word-stress patterns (man/woman, photograph/photography). Confusingly, in some contexts, the terms 'ablaut', 'vowel gradation', 'apophony' and 'vowel alternation' may be used synonymously, especially in synchronic comparisons, but historical linguistsHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
prefer to keep 'ablaut' for the specific Indo-European phenomenon, which is the meaning intended by the linguists who first coined the word.
Since ablaut was a regular system in Proto-Indo-European, but survives only as irregular or partially regular variations in the recorded languages, any explanation of the topic has to begin with the prehistoric origins. Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the hypothetical parent language from which most of the modern and ancient European languages evolved. By comparing the recorded forms from the daughter languages, linguists can infer the forms of the parent language. However, it is not certain how PIE was realised phonetically, and the reconstructions are to be understood as an encoding of the deduced phonemes; there is no correct way to pronounce them. All PIE forms are marked with an asterisk to indicate that they are hypothetical. For more details on these reconstructions, see Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
, Laryngeal theoryThe laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of one, or a set of three , consonant sounds termed "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language...
and Comparative methodIn linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
.
Ablaut in Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had a regular ablaut sequence that contrasted the five vowel sounds e/ē/o/ō/Ø.
This means that in different forms of the same word, or in different but related words, the basic vowel, a short /e/, could be replaced by a long /ē/, a short /o/ or a long /ō/, or it could be omitted (transcribed as Ø).
-
- {| class="wikitable"
| zero
| short
| long
|-
| rowspan=2 | Ø
| e
| ē
|-
| o
| ō
|}
When a syllable had a short e, it is said to be in the "e-grade"; when it had no vowel, it is said to be in the "zero grade", etc. Note that when we refer simply to the e-grade or o-grade, the short vowel forms are meant, unless the lengthened grades are specified. The (short) e-grade is sometimes called the full grade.
A classic example of the five grades of ablaut in a single root is provided by the different case forms of two closely related Greek words:
-
- {| class="wikitable"
|-
| Ablaut grade
| PIE (reconstruction)
| Greek
| (Greek transliterated)
| Translation
|-
| e-grade or full grade
| {{unicode|*ph2-ter-m̥}}
| {{polytonic|πα-τέρ-α}}
| pa-ter-a
| "father" (noun, accusative)
|-
| lengthened e-grade
| *ph2-tēr
| {{polytonic|πα-τήρ}}
| pa-tēr
| "father" (noun, nominative)
|-
| zero-grade
| *ph2-tr-os
| {{polytonic|πα-τρ-ός}}
| pa-tr-os
| "father's" (noun, genitive)
|-
| o-grade
| {{unicode|*n̥-ph2-tor-m̥}}
| {{polytonic|ἀ-πά-τορ-α}}
| a-pa-tor-a
| "fatherless" (adjective, accusative)
|-
| lengthened o-grade
| {{unicode|*n̥-ph2-tōr}}
| {{polytonic|ἀ-πά-τωρ}}
| a-pa-tōr
| "fatherless" (adjective, nominative)
|-
|}
The syllable in bold is the one being considered. It is crucial also to notice which syllable carries the word stress - that in italics, and in Greek, that with the diacritic. In this atypically neat example, switch to the zero-grade can be seen when the word stress moves to the following syllable, a switch to the o-grade when the word stress moves to the preceding syllable, and a lengthening of the vowel when the syllable is in word-final position. However, as with most PIE reconstructions, scholars differ about the details of this example. It must also be noted that the lengthening of the vowel in the nominative forms listed above is not directly conditioned by ablaut, but is rather a result of Szemerényi's lawSzemerényi's law is a Proto-Indo-European phonological rule, named after Hungarian linguist Oswald Szemerényi, according to which word-final clusters of vowels , resonants and of either */s/ or */h₂/ are simplified by dropping the word-final fricative , with compensatory lengthening of the...
, in which the older sequences *ph2-ter-s and {{unicode|*n̥-ph2-tor-s}} became *ph2-tēr and {{unicode|*n̥-ph2-tōr}}. The lengthened grade in these forms is therefore a result of sound change rather than grammar (and the forms themselves were originally in the regular, unlengthened e- and o-grade), although it was later grammaticalised and spread to other words in which the change did not occur.
It has often been speculated that an original e-grade in pre-Indo-European underwent two changes in some phonetic environments: under certain circumstances it changed its colouring to (long or short) o (the o-grade), and in others it disappeared entirely (the zero-grade). However, since such phonetic conditions that controlled ablaut have never been determined, the position of the word stress may not have been a key factor at all. And since there are many counterexamples like e.g. *deywó- and its nominative plural *-es that show pretonic and posttonic e-grade, respectively, these rules may never be found anyway. For these reasons, there has recently been made an attempt to analyse Early PIE ablaut in terms of introflexion and root-and-pattern-morphology. It has been shown that it seems to be highly likely that Early PIE was of the root-inflexional morphological type, as was Proto-SemiticProto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language ancestral to historical Semitic languages of the Middle East. Locations which have been proposed for its origination include northern Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Levant with a 2009 study proposing that it may have originated around...
(see also Proto-Indo-European languageThe Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
).{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}
Zero grade
The zero grade of ablaut may appear difficult. In the case of *ph2trós, which may already in PIE have been pronounced something like /pət-'ros/, it is not difficult to imagine this as a contraction of an older *ph2terós, pronounced perhaps /pət-er-'os/, as this combination of consonants and vowels would be possible in English too. In other cases, however, the absence of a vowel strikes the speaker of a modern western European language as unpronounceable.
To understand this, one must be aware that PIE had a number of sounds which in principle were consonants, yet could operate in ways analogous to vowels. These are the four syllabic sonorants, the three laryngealsThe laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of one, or a set of three , consonant sounds termed "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language...
and the two semi-vowels:
- The syllabic sonorants
A syllabic consonant is a consonant which either forms a syllable on its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable. The diacritic for this in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the under-stroke, ⟨⟩...
are m, n, r and l, which could be consonants much as they are in English, but could also be held on as continuants and carry a full syllable stress; when this happens, they are transcribed with a small circle beneath them. Compare r and l in some modern Slavic languages, or m and n in some African languages: in Srb, the Serbian word for "Serb", the r carries much the function of a vowel; in the African word Ngazija, the name of a BantuThe Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
language, the initial N- should be pronounced with a pulse (nasal plosion){{Citation needed|reason=Isn't this a prenasalized stop?|date=July 2009}}, as a full syllable, without the help of a vowel. Modern English dialects have a syllabic consonant /l/ as the final syllable of "bottle" [bɒtl̩ˠ] and a syllabic /m/ in some pronunciations of "enthusiasm".
- The laryngeals could be pronounced as consonants, in which case they were probably variations on the h sound, hence they are normally transcribed as h1, h2 and h3. However they could also carry a syllable stress, in which case they were more like vowels, hence some linguists prefer to transcribe them ə1, ə2 and ə3. The vocalic pronunciation may have originally involved the consonantal sounds with a very slight schwa before and/or after the consonant.
- In pre-vocalic positions, the phonemes u and i were semi-vowels, probably pronounced like English w and y, but they could also become pure vowels when the following ablaut vowel reduced to zero. When u and i came in postvocalic positions, the result was a diphthong.
Ablaut is nevertheless regular, and looks like this:
| e-grade |
o-grade |
zero-grade |
| ey |
oy |
i |
| ew |
ow |
u |
| er |
or |
r̥ |
| el |
ol |
l̥ |
| em |
om |
m̥ |
| en |
on |
n̥ |
| eh1 |
oh1 |
h1 or ə1 |
| eh2 (/ah2/) |
oh2 |
h2 or ə2 |
| eh3 (/oh3/) |
oh3 |
h3 or ə3 |
Thus any of these could replace the ablaut vowel when it was reduced to the zero-grade: the pattern CVrC (e.g. {{unicode|*bʰergʰ-}}) could become CrC ({{unicode|*bʰr̥gʰ-}}).
However, not every PIE syllable was capable of forming a zero grade; some consonant structures inhibited it in particular cases, or completely. So for example, although the preterite plural of a Germanic strong verb (see below) is derived from the zero grade, classes 4 and 5 have instead vowels representing the lengthened e-grade, as the stems of these verbs could not have sustained a zero grade in this position.
Zero grade is said to be from pre-PIE syncope in unaccented syllables, but in some cases lack of accent does not cause zero grade: *deywó-, nominative plural *-es "god". There does not seem to be a rule governing which unaccented syllables take zero grade and which take stronger grades. Some Indo-Europeanists{{Who|date=August 2011}} reject the syncope hypothesis, and instead understand early PIE as a SemiticThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
-type language with discontinuous consonant rootsNonconcatenative morphology, also called discontinuous morphology and introflection, is a form of word formation in which the root is modified and which does not involve stringing morphemes together...
and vowel transfixIn linguistic morphology, a transfix is a discontinuous affix, which occurs at more than one position in a word. The prototypical example comes from the Semitic languages, where nearly all word derivation and inflection involves the interdigitation of a discontinuous root with a discontinuous affix...
es.
a-grade
It is still a matter of debate whether PIE had an original a-vowel at all. In later PIE, the disappearance of the laryngeal h2 could leave an a-colouring and this may explain all occurrences of a in later PIE. However some argue that the e-grade could sometimes be replaced by an a-grade without the influence of a laryngeal. This is controversial, but might help to explain the vowels in class 6 Germanic verbsIn the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of ablaut. In English, these are verbs like sing, sang, sung...
, for example.
Subsequent development of ablaut
Although PIE only had this one, basically regular ablaut sequence, the development in the daughter languages is frequently far more complicated, and few reflect the original system as neatly as Greek. Various factors such as vowel harmonyVowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
, assimilation with nasals, or the effect of the presence of laryngeals in the Indo-European (IE) roots and their subsequent loss in most daughter languages, mean that a language may have several different vowels representing a single vowel in the parent language. Thus while ablaut survives in some form in all Indo-European languages, it becomes progressively less systematic over time.
Ablaut explains vowel differences between related words of the same language. For example:
- English fetch and foot both come from the same IE root *ped-, the common idea being "going". The former comes from the e-grade, the latter from the lengthened o-grade.
- German Berg (hill) and Burg (castle) both come from the root {{unicode|*bʰergʰ-}}, which presumably meant "high". The former comes from the e-grade, the latter from the zero-grade. (Zero-grade followed by r becomes ur in Germanic.)
Ablaut also explains vowel differences between cognates in different languages.
- English tooth comes from Germanic *tanþ-s (e.g. Old English tōþ, Old High German zand), genitive *tund-iz (Gothic tunþus, but also aiƕa-tundi "thornbush"). This form is related to Latin dens, dentis and Greek {{polytonic|ὀδούς}}, {{polytonic|ὀδόντος}} (same meaning), reflected in the English words dentist and orthodontic. One reconstructed IE form is *dónts, genitive *dn̥tés. The consonant differences can be explained by regular sound shifts in primitive Germanic, but not the vowel differences: by the regular laws of sound changes, Germanic a goes back to PIE o, but un usually goes back to a syllabic n̥. The explanation is that the Germanic and Greek nominative forms developed from the o-grade, the Latin word and the Germanic genitive from the zero-grade (where syllabic n̥ developed into en much in the same way as it became un in Germanic). Going a step further back, some scholars reconstruct *h1dónts, from the zero grade of the root *h1ed- 'to eat' and the participal -ont-, so explaining it as 'the eating one'.
- English foot, as mentioned above, comes from the lengthened o-grade of *ped-. Greek {{polytonic|πούς}}, {{polytonic|ποδός}} and Latin pes, pedis (cf. English octopus and pedestrian), come from the (short) o-grade and the e-grade respectively.
For the English-speaking non-specialist, a good reference work for quick information on IE roots, including the difference of ablaut grade behind related lexemes, is Calvert WatkinsCalvert Watkins is a professor Emeritus of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and professor-in-residence at UCLA.His doctoral dissertation, Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb I...
, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 2nd edition, Boston & New York 2000.
(Note that in discussions of lexis, IE roots are normally cited in the e-grade and without any inflections.)
Ablaut and grammatical function
In PIE, there were already ablaut differences within the paradigms of verbs and nouns. These were not the main markers of grammatical form, since the inflection system served this purpose, but they must have been significant secondary markers.
An example of ablaut in the paradigm of the noun in PIE can be found in *pértus, from which the English words ford and (via Latin) port are derived (both via the zero-grade stem {{unicode|*pr̥t-}}).
-
- {| class="wikitable"
|-
|
|
| root (p-r)
| suffix (t-u)
|-
| Nominative
| *per-tu-s
| e-grade
| zero-grade
|-
| Accusative
| *per-tu-m
| e-grade
| zero-grade
|-
| Genitive
| {{unicode|*pr̥-tew-s}}
| zero-grade
| e-grade
|-
| Dative
| {{unicode|*pr̥-tew-ey}}
| zero-grade
| e-grade
|-
|}
An example in a verb: {{unicode|*bʰeydʰ-}} "to wait" (cf. "bide").
-
- {| class="wikitable"
|-
|
|
| e-grade
|
|-
| Perfect (3rd singular)
| {{unicode|*bʰe-bʰoydʰ-e}}
| o-grade
| (note reduplicatingReduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
prefix)
|-
| Perfect (3rd plural)
| {{unicode|*bʰe-bʰidʰ-n̥t}}
| zero-grade
| (note reduplicating prefix)
|-
|}
In the daughter languages, these came to be important markers of grammatical distinctions. The vowel change in the Germanic strong verb, for example, is the direct descendant of that seen in the Indo-European verb paradigm. Examples in modern English are:
-
- {| class="wikitable"
|-
| InfinitiveIn grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
| PreteriteThe preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
| Past participle
|-
| sing
| sang
| sung
|-
| give
| gave
| given
|-
| strive
| strove
| striven
|-
| break
| broke
| broken
|-
|}
It was in this context of Germanic verbs that ablaut was first described, and this is still what most people primarily associate with the phenomenon. A fuller description of ablaut operating in English, German and Dutch verbs and of the historical factors governing these can be found at the article Germanic strong verbIn the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of ablaut. In English, these are verbs like sing, sang, sung...
.
The same phenomenon is displayed in the verb tables of LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Ancient GreekGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
. Examples of ablaut as a grammatical marker in Latin are the vowel changes in the perfect stem of verbs.
-
- {| class="wikitable"
|-
| Present tenseThe present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
| Perfect
|
|
|-
| agō
| ēgī
| "to do"
|
|-
| videō
| vīdī
| "to see"
| (vowel lengthening)
|-
| sedeō
| sēdī
| "to sit"
| (vowel lengthening)
|-
| cadō
| cecidī
| "to fall"
| (note reduplicating prefix)
|-
|}
Ablaut can often explain apparently random irregularities. For example, the verb "to be" in Latin has the forms est (he is) and sunt (they are). The equivalent forms in German are very similar: ist and sind. The same forms are present in Slavic languages – est and sut' . The difference between singular and plural in these languages is easily explained: the PIE root is *h1es-. In the singular, the stem is stressed, so it remains in the e-grade, and it takes the inflection -ti. In the plural, however, the inflection -énti was stressed, causing the stem to reduce to the zero grade: {{unicode|*h1es-énti}} → {{unicode|*h1s-énti}}. See main article: Indo-European copulaA feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb to be. Though in some languages, such as Russian, it is vestigial, it is present nonetheless in atrophied forms or derivatives.-General features:...
.
Some of the morphological functions of the various grades are as follows:
e-grade:
- Present tense of thematic verbs; root stress.
- Present singular of athematic verbs; root stress.
- Accusative and vocative singular, nominative/accusative/vocative dual, nominative plural of nouns.
o-grade:
- Verbal nouns — (1) stem-stressed masculine action nouns (Greek gónos "offspring", Sanskrit jánas "creature, person"; Greek trókhos "circular course" < "*act of running"); (2) ending-stressed feminine, originally collective, action nouns (Greek gonḗ "offspring", Sanskrit janā́ "birth"); (3) ending-stressed masculine agent nouns (Greek trokhós "wheel" < "*runner").
- Nominative/vocative/accusative singular of certain nouns (acrostatic root nouns such dṓm, plural dómes "house"; proterokinetic neuter nouns such as *wódr̥ "water" or dóru "tree").
- Present tense of causative verbs; stem (not root) stress.
- Perfect singular tense.
zero-grade:
- Present dual and plural tense of athematic verbs; ending stress.
- Perfect dual and plural tense; ending stress.
- Past participles; ending stress.
- Some verbs in the aorist (the Greek thematic "second aorist").
- Oblique singular/dual/plural, accusative plural of nouns.
lengthened grade:
- Nominative singular of many nouns.
- Present singular of certain athematic verbs (so-called Narten-stem verbs).
- Some verbs in the aorist.
- Some derived verbal nouns (so-called proto-vrddhi).
Note that many examples of lengthened-grade roots in daughter languages are actually due to the effect of laryngealLaryngeal may mean*pertaining to the larynx*in Indo-European linguistics, a consonant postulated in the laryngeal theory*in phonetics, an alternate term for glottal sounds....
s.
See also
- Augment
In linguistics, the augment is a syllable added to the beginning of the word in certain Indo-European languages, most notably Greek, Armenian, and the Indo-Iranian languages such as Sanskrit, to form the past tenses.-Indo-European languages:...
- Apophony
In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information .-Description:Apophony is...
- Germanic umlaut
In linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term umlaut was originally coined and is used principally in connection with the study of the Germanic languages...
- Guna (in grammar)
- I-mutation
I-mutation is an important type of sound change, more precisely a category of regressive metaphony, in which a back vowel is fronted, and/or a front vowel is raised, if the following syllable contains /i/, /ī/ or /j/ I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or...
- Inflected language
- Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
- Vrddhi
' is a Sanskrit word meaning "growth" . In Panini's grammar, it is also a technical term for a group of long vowels. In Indo-European linguistics, it has become a term for the lengthened grade of the ablaut vowel gradation peculiar to the Indo-European languages...