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Indo-European ablaut

 

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Indo-European ablaut



 
 
In linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, the term ablaut designates a system of vowel
Vowel

In 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....
 gradation (i.e. regular vowel variations) in Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, linguistic reconstruction 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 languages
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
. (For the general phenomenon, see Apophony
Apophony

In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammar ....
.) An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb 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 Grimm
Jacob Grimm

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm , German Confederation philologist, jurist and mythology, was born at Hanau, in Hesse-Kassel . He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law, the author of the monumental German Dictionary, his Deutsche Mythologie and more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy Tales....
, though the phenomenon was first described a century earlier by the Dutch linguist Lambert ten Kate in his book Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de Nederduytsche ("Commonality between the Gothic language
Gothic language

Gothic is an extinct language Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from Codex Argenteus, a 6th century copy of a 4th century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic languages with a sizable corpus....
 and Dutch
Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
", 1710).

l gradation is any vowel difference between two related words (e.g.






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In linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, the term ablaut designates a system of vowel
Vowel

In 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....
 gradation (i.e. regular vowel variations) in Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, linguistic reconstruction 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 languages
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
. (For the general phenomenon, see Apophony
Apophony

In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammar ....
.) An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb 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 Grimm
Jacob Grimm

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm , German Confederation philologist, jurist and mythology, was born at Hanau, in Hesse-Kassel . He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law, the author of the monumental German Dictionary, his Deutsche Mythologie and more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy Tales....
, though the phenomenon was first described a century earlier by the Dutch linguist Lambert ten Kate in his book Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de Nederduytsche ("Commonality between the Gothic language
Gothic language

Gothic is an extinct language Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from Codex Argenteus, a 6th century copy of a 4th century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic languages with a sizable corpus....
 and Dutch
Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
", 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 (eg. man and men). The difference need not be indicated in the spelling. There are many kinds of vowel gradation in English, as in most languages, and these are discussed generally in the article apophony
Apophony

In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammar ....
. 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 umlaut
Germanic umlaut

In linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable.The term umlaut was originally coined and is principally used 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 heard used synonymously, especially in synchronic comparisons, but historical linguists
Historical linguistics

Historical 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 this. 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-European
Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
, Laryngeal theory
Laryngeal theory

The laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of a set of three consonant sounds known as "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language ....
 and Comparative method
Comparative method

In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages. It requires the use of two or more languages. It is opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which studies the internal development of a single language over time....
.

Ablaut in Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had a regular ablaut sequence that contrasted the five vowel sounds e/e/o/o/Ř. 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 /e/, a short /o/ or a long /o/, or it could be omitted (transcribed as Ř).
zero short long
Ř e e
o o
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 referring 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:

Ablaut grade PIE (reconstruction) Greek (Greek transliterated) Translation
e-grade or full grade pa-ter-a "father" (noun, accusative)
lengthened e-grade *ph2-ter pa-ter "father" (noun, nominative)
zero-grade *ph2-tr-os pa-tr-os "father's" (noun, genitive)
o-grade a-pa-tor-a "fatherless" (adjective, accusative)
lengthened o-grade a-pa-tor "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.

Until lately it has often been speculated that the historical development in pre-Indo-European should have been that an original e-grade 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 which 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 NPl. *-es which 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-Semitic
Proto-Semitic language

Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language of the Semitic languages. The earliest attestations of a Semitic language are in Akkadian language, dating to ca....
 (see also Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, linguistic reconstruction common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans....
).

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 /p?t-'ros/, it is not difficult to imagine this as a contraction of an older *ph2terós, pronounced perhaps /p?t-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 laryngeals
Laryngeal theory

The laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of a set of three consonant sounds known as "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language ....
 and the two semi-vowels:

  • The syllabic sonorants 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 Bantu
    Bantu languages

    The Bantu languages constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo languages family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree....
     language, the initial N- should be pronounced with a pulse (nasal plosion), as a full syllable, without the help of a vowel.


  • 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 ?1, ?2 and ?3. 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
ei oi i
eu ou u


Thus any of these could replace the ablaut vowel when it was reduced to the zero-grade: the pattern CVrC (eg. ) could become CrC ().

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.

The zero grade has been said to be due to pre-PIE syncope, but as there are pretonic as well as posttonic e-grades (e.g. *deywó-, NPl. *-es etc.) it has shown to be impossible to figure out a rule for it. Especially those Indo-Europeanists that regard Early PIE as a root-inflectional language semitico more with root-and-pattern-morphology (see the footnote under "Proto-Indo-European language, Morphology") now reject the traditional "syncope-hypothesis", since within that theory, ablaut is seen as originally consisting of a combination of vowels which form a transfixal and discontinuous vowel melody.

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 verbs
Germanic strong verb

In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of Indo-European 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 harmony
Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what 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 , 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 *tanţ-uz, which is related to Latin dens, dentis and Greek , (same meaning), reflected in the English words dentist and orthodontic. The reconstructed IE root is identical to the Latin: *dent-. 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. The explanation is that the Germanic and Greek words developed from the o-grade, the Latin word from the e-grade. (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 , 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, the best reference work for quick information on IE roots, including the difference of ablaut grade behind related lexemes, is Calvert Watkins
Calvert Watkins

Calvert 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.

   root (p-r) suffix (t-u)
Nominative *per-tu-s e-grade zero-grade
Accusative *per-tu-m e-grade zero-grade
Genitive zero-grade e-grade
Dative zero-grade e-grade


An example in a verb: "to wait" (cf. "bide").

Infinitive e-grade 
Perfect (3rd singular) o-grade (note reduplicating
Reduplication

Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphology process by which the root or Stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated.Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical Derivation to create new words....
 prefix)
Perfect (3rd plural) 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:

Infinitive
Infinitive

In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English language, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the grammatical particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives....
Preterite
Preterite

The preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place in the past. It is similar to the aorist in languages such as Greek language....
Past participle
sing sang sung
give gave given
strive strove striven
eat ate eaten


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 verb
Germanic strong verb

In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is one which marks its past tense by means of Indo-European ablaut. In English, these are verbs like sing, sang, sung....
.

The same phenomenon is displayed in the verb tables of Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
, Ancient Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 and Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
. Examples of ablaut as a grammatical marker in Latin are the vowel changes in the perfect stem of verbs.

Present tense
Present tense

The present tense is the Grammatical tense that may be used to express:* action at the present* a state of being;* a habitual action;* an occurrence in the near future; or...
Perfect
Perfect aspect

The perfect aspect is variously considered either an grammatical aspect or grammatical tense which calls a listener's attention to the consequences generated by an action, rather than the action itself....
  
ago egi "to do" 
video vidi "to see" (vowel lengthening)
sedeo sedi "to sit" (vowel lengthening)
cado cecidi "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 difference between singular and plural in both languages is easily explained: the late PIE root is *es- (going back to an earlier h1es- with subsequent loss of the laryngeal). In the singular, the stem is stressed, so it remains in the e-grade, and it takes the inflection -t. In the plural, however, the inflection -nt was stressed, causing the stem to reduce to the zero grade: ? . When, much later, the daughter languages became uncomfortable with this nasal plosion, they introduced compensatory vowels after the /s/. See main article: Indo-European copula
Indo-European copula

A feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English language verb to be.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 with ending stress.
  • 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 tense (the Greek thematic "second aorist").
  • Oblique singular/dual/plural, accusative plural of nouns.


lengthened grade:

  • Nominative singular of many nouns.


See also

  • Augment
    Augment (linguistics)

    In linguistics, the augment is a syllable added to the beginning of the word in certain Indo-European languages, most notably Greek language , Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages such as Sanskrit, to form the Perfect aspect, preterite, or aorist tenses....
  • Apophony
    Apophony

    In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammar ....
  • Germanic Umlaut
    Germanic umlaut

    In linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable.The term umlaut was originally coined and is principally used in connection with the study of the Germanic languages....
  • Guna (in grammar)
    Guna

    The Sanskrit word has the basic meaning of "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....
  • I-mutation
    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 Raising , if the following syllable contains /i/, /i/ or /j/ ....
  • Inflected language
  • Reduplication
    Reduplication

    Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphology process by which the root or Stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated.Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical Derivation to create new words....
  • Vriddhi